"WE HAVE 500 PATENTS FROM OUR INDIA SITE"

Collins Aerospace has a longstanding presence in India, with an in-country presence of over 25 years. The US based aerospace firm, began manufacturing operations in India early on, in its operations and remains very committed to the India, SAVYASACHI SRINIVAS, Executive Director of Engineering, Collins Aerospace and BINU KRISHNANKUTTY (Lead, Manufacturing), Collins Aerospace spoke with GEOPOLITICS on the sidelines of the Aero India held at Bengaluru in February.

Please provide an insight into Collins Aerospace’s presence in India?
Savyasachi: We have a longstanding presence in India, going back decades. The aerospace and defence industry here in Bengaluru and in the state of Karnataka is very evolved due to the presence of HAL, DRDO and ISRO here. Looking at Collins Aerospace in India from an engineering standpoint, it has been over 16 years and if you look at our engineering journey, our capability has gone up every year.

Today, while our focus is very much outward, we are still 100 percent exports focussed, all our work goes to our business units, and to our end customers; our focus is now shifting towards how do we look more inwards. This is related to building the entire ecosystem around us for manufacturing, including building the supply chain, be it for engineering or working with academia, institutions.

We have 1000 engineers in Hyderabad, and so between Bengaluru and Hyderabad, we have 5000 engineers in total. We have invested heavily in in Bengaluru and Hyderabad and these are two cities with a lot of talent. Bengaluru clearly also has the aerospace ecosystem with the presence of HAL/ISRO and test labs that we can leverage, such as the world-class ones at the National Aerospace Laboratories (NAL).

We are also able to leverage our partners in Bengaluru, such as HCL and L&T or Quest, Cyient, they are with us here as well. So, Bengaluru is very plug and play for us. We also like the vision of the Telengana government and we like that they are very aggressive and progressive in terms of their policies. And so, we continue to be vested in Telangana as well. There are other states, Tamil Nadu is there as well but you know, there is only so much that we can stretch ourselves.