“The share of imports in electronics is so high in defense. The more production we do in India, the defense import bill will decrease and will be much cheaper for the country,” he said. Mahendra nahata, Managing Director, HFCL Limited said.
The Delhi-based company, which mainly produces fiber optic cables, and one of the providers of the prestigious Network for Spectrum (NFS) program for Indian Army. He also designed software-defined radio (SDR) for the defense application.
Banking on local information and technology (ICT) products backed by research and development, Nahata believes that locally designed and manufactured products can also help the government save money and time.
“We still communicate and we don’t diversify, we just watch defense electronics. We see defense as a major market, but we remain within our own field of electronics, “said the CEO.
Following the growing allocation of the defense budget, the defense electronics segment looks promising in India, which also includes modernization of the armed forces and replacement of older equipment and technology.
The Indian defense electronics market is expected to approach $ 70 billion over the next five years, according to estimates.
The center had also invented it electronics production clusters (EMC) a scheme to provide financial support for the establishment of infrastructure for electronics manufacturing facilities.
“Our company has also completed the design of a high-capacity radio relay, which is again for military use. We are also designing other defense electronics that include electronic fuses for artillery use,” he added. It has also developed a carrier-class Wi-Fi system that it says is based on 100% local R&D, including hardware and software, and has already delivered 100,000 units in record time.
The company said it has undertaken the conceptualization, design and development of the product and owns intellectual property rights (IPR) unlike its competitors, which supply products based on technology transfer from other countries.
HFCL is also in the process of designing night-vision devices and also plans to increase current R&D spending by investing a new fund of Rs 125.
“In the next financial year, we will spend about 125 rupees on research and development. We are opening a new research center in Bangalore and plan to open it in April.
In 2019, HFCL received the largest purchase order to date of Rs 2,467 from state-owned Bharat Sanchar Nigam Limited for the turnkey development, operation and maintenance of a communications network for the Indian Army as part of the NFS initiative.
The Department of Defense (MO) and Department of Telecommunications (DoT) signed a pact in 2009-10, according to which the former agreed to release 25 MHz 3G spectrum and 20 MHz in the 2G phase range. Instead of spectrum, DoT had asked BSNL to create an exclusive defense network for communications services.