HAL PTAE-7 Laghu Shakti Turbojet Layout used in Lakshya PTA - DRDO has also gained considerable experience while developing the Kaveri Afterburning Turbofan
The Kalyani group is all set to scale up its presence in the defence production sector. The group will concentrate on operationalization its three foreign joint ventures and at the same time, also explore opportunities in the aerospace sector.
Speaking to "Business-Standard", Kalyani group chairman Baba Kalyani said "We are building jet engines — small ones, not as big as those by Rolls-Royce — for helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles."
The group is developing engines for UAV's and he has instructed his engineers at Pune to achieve this objective within one year.
He went on to add "We are going in the direction that uses our core knowledge — material, material transformation, forging, machining, assembly, sub-systems. That’s where our expertise lies."
"The group sees lot of opportunities in the aerospace segment", added Kalyani.
On the aerospace side, the group is looking more at components manufacturing and are also looking at jet engines. This is another bugbear in India that the country has not been able to produce our own jet engine even after 60 years of independence.
The fact is India does not have an indigenous jet engine, a comparative competent jet engine and the Chairman wants to put his personal attention into seeing whether that would be possible.
The advantage of indigenous production are many, one being the cost will be at least 30 percent lower than an imported system, mainly becuase there is nobody in the world that can beat India in defence equipments on cost.
The armed forces require over 4,000 guns right now with the average price of one single unit expected to be around Rs 12 crore. This totals to Rs 50,000 crore worth of guns which no single company will make and therefore, the group plans to set up a ‘Make in India’ cell for the same.
But the bugbear is that no one company cannot make Rs 50,000 crore worth of guns, so even if four companies are involved including state run units and the private sector included, if one takes one-fourth of that huge pie, which is still a lot of money. Hence, kalyani says that he has set up a ‘Make in India’ cell.
On import substitution he said that the import substitute, it will be at a much lower cost, so that margins will be very good because it will be very competitive and with that the company can build up capacity and capability.
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