How to market indigenous technology?

A.V.

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india has long been plagued with delay in defence manufacture and deals which has cast quite a bad impression on the image of the country in the weapons market, now although india manufactures weapons on a mass scale yet she is unable to compete with major payers in this area one of the important lag is the marketing aspect of self made weapons
how do you think this can be overcome? what are the policies that can help?what do you think went wrong in all these years?
what do you propose?
 

bengalraider

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Almost all Indian manufactured weapons are manufactured by a bloated, ineffective and corrupt PSU sector. This has negatively impacted the Indian defense sector for years . the below list is my opinion on what needs to be done to change the way Indian weapons are made and sold.

1- Corpotarize and privatize, defense PSU's need to be morphed into true corporate organisations on the lines of DCNS in France , or even on the lines of ITC or SAIL.Greater privatization in the defense sector should also be encouraged.

2- True competition: let there be open competition among the PSU's and private players for Indian armament development and building contracts i.e let L&T compete with Garden reach/Mazagon docks to design and build the next generation Indian frigate.I'm talking design competitions like the JSF competition.

3- Cut the subsidies and payouts- Throw the PSU's to the wolves of the market; Either they will learn to swim like ITC and SBI or sink like Fertilizer factory Sindri.Either way only the companies that improvise , adapt and grow a new culture of corporate responsibility shall be able to survive, this shall separate the chaff from the grain.

4- Allow greater foreign investment by deregularizing even more items related to the defense sector ,already the deregulation has started to bear fruit with numerous small and large manufacturers wanting to or setting up shop in India, this can only be good for the nation as these investments bring jobs and knowhow with them.

5-A different national company (corporate entity)on the lines of Rosoboronexport should be formed to develop and grow markets for Indian PSU manufactured weapons in foreign countries This same company would also be responsible for servicing Indian manufactured equipment abroad., at the same time the management of these companies need to develop and grow a crack sales team on the lines of the sales teams from Sukhoi or Fincianteri.

6-Set ironclad guarantees for the induction of indigenous systems i.e if and indigenous system only meets 90% of required parameters ; we should still go for it and not a foreign import that could meet 95% parameters, at the same time the indigenous system should be further developed to meet 100%parameters.

7- Spread the wealth- We should provide India's friends in the neighborhood with Indian manufactured weapons at credit(on very lenient terms)or at discount , do not look to make big profits from the first sale first grow and develop the relation with potential customers.India may even have to finance sales of her own weapons via loans provide by her own banks i.e- loan Nepal the money to but extra Dhruv choppers if the nepalese airforce needs them.
 

bengalraider

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Source: Defence staff slam privatisation move

Defence staff slam privatisation move

Express News ServiceFirst Published : 04 Nov 2009 02:44:00 AM IST
CHENNAI: The 23rd national convention of the All India Defence Employees Federation (AIDEF) expressed concern over the proposal to increase FDI in defence sector to 49% and the outsourcing of defence production to private sector.
In a release, the federation pointed out that the government was going ahead with its plans for more FDI and privatisation despite repeated scams in almost all the defence deals, especially those involving foreign firms.
The AIDEF is of the view that the only way to eradicate corruption in defence deals is to strengthen and expand DRDO, ordnance factories and defence PSUs.
The convention, held at Ordnance Factory, Chandrapur, recently urged the Union Government to drop the move to invest employees’ PF money and pension funds in share market and to continue with social security schemes for new recruits.
It also slammed the defence ministry’s move to deny trade union rights to the employees of military hospitals, training centers etc.
Looks like the OFB trade unions are worried about having to work in an competitive environment, having been"sarkari damaads" since independence these unions now wield considerable influence within the MoD, hopefully the GOI will not blink this time around. These union men should be made to realize that putting one's tea break on a higher priority than national security will not work.
 

SATISH

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Set up a separate Marketing division like how ISRO did with Antrix Corporation. I think that is a good business model.
 

icecoolben

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Drdo products suffer utmost from efficient quality control methods at ordnance factories. The government's holding should be diluted to 51% , if it still doesn't reach the private efficiency of 90% from the current 60%. Then sell the entire stake to a single private entity with controling stake.
As an engineering student, i've visited both private and public sector units for training. From what i saw, integral coach factory at vilivakam, chennai was sustained largely from goverment orders, even exports to srilanka were part of government aid to improve its war ravaged northern region. While a lesser known fenner india ltd, madurai,tn. Was survived by growing to market needs. This company supplies belts of power transmission for automobies and other equipment. They tuned themselves for the need of the customer. While they faced competition from small units that were really cost effective, they responded by cutting labour force. Employment by contract basis. While at icf, all i saw were slogans, innumerable unions, employees crowed at one work place and a large number of machines out of comision, under repair, cog webed etc. But what i saw at fenner a sleek implementation of the basic iso standards to tqm, ppm,5-s etc. But in icf quality was defined in their own language as 'to achieve utmost quality standards'. the rest of the 10 days, i searched for those quality standards. But found none. Fenner marketed its goods internationally by proposition of a brand name that was new, customer specific like '100ppm target for ford', and a specific sales department for exports with europeon quality targets. Even my post training record was asked to be hand-written and wasn't even verified in icf. At fenner, it was a combination of soft copy and a hard presentation, it went through from hr to general manager and appraisal of my work from him drew a sense of satisfaction. There wasn't a export specific unit at icf. With all of india's strategic units at government hands exports won't be a priority while private entreprenors would be reduced to marketing components and subsystems that are not as much value added.
 

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