...
In 1983, IAF realised the need for an Indian combat aircraft for two primary purposes. The principal and most obvious goal was to replace India's ageing MiG-21 fighters, which had been the mainstay of the IAF since the 1970s.
...
In 1984, the Indian government chose to establish the Aeronautical Development Agency (ADA) to manage the LCA programme. While the Tejas is often described as a product of Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), responsibility for its development belongs to ADA, a national consortium of over 100 defence laboratories, industrial organisations, and academic institutions with HAL being the principal contractor.
[19] The government's "self-reliance" goals for the LCA included the three most sophisticated and challenging systems: the fly-by-wire (FBW)
flight control system (FCS), multi-mode
pulse-doppler radar, and
afterburning turbofan engine.
[20]
The IAF's Air Staff Requirement for the LCA were not finalised until October 1985. This delay rendered moot the original schedule which called for first flight in April 1990 and service entry in 1995; however, it also gave the ADA time to better marshal national R&D and industrial resources, recruit personnel, create infrastructure, and to gain a clearer perspective of which advanced technologies could be developed locally and which would need to be imported.
[15][21]
Project definition commenced in October 1987 with France's Dassault-Breguet Aviation as consultants. Dassault-Breguet were to assist in the design and systems integration of the aircraft, with 30 top-flight engineers reported to have flown to India to act as technical advisers to IADA, in exchange for $100m / ₹560 crore(equivalent to ₹52 billion or US$730 million in 2018), this phase was completed in September 1988.
[21][22]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL_Tejas
