Godrej aims for big share of India's defence-production pie

Even as the debate over handling of defence contracts by PSUs rage on private sector companies are stepping on the gas.

The Godrej Group which has been investing in the aerospace business since the last twenty years has just finished its first production order of airframes for BrahMos missiles and is aiming for more such contracts reports CNBC-TV18’s Aastha Maheshwari.

The Rs 5000 crore Godrej Group is aiming for a bigger share of India's multi-billion dollar defence-production pie.

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The group's military equipment business has just delivered their first production order of 40 missile airframes to BrahMos Aerospace, which is on track to supplying cruise missiles to the Indian Air Force by 2015. Now the company has got orders for 100 more sets which are likely to take 3 years for completion.

Thanks to the BrahMos contract, Godrej & Boyce 's manufacturing order book is expected to grow from USD6 billion to USD10 billion over the next few years.

Jamshyd Godrej, CMD, Godrej & Boyce: “We delivered 40 complete missile sections. We have an order for another 100 missile sections which should take about three years to complete and at the same time we are working on other systems in parallel.”

Even though at present the defence sector contributes less than 10 percent of Godrej & Boyce's overall revenues, the company continues to see immense potential in the sector.

“It is not a large percentage by sales, it is a small percentage, but it is very important for us strategically and we believe that in years to come this could become a fairly large business. At the moment it is a business which we have been incubating for many decades,” added Jamshyd Godrej.

Godrej & Boyce is also looking beyond India with plans of exporting its aerospace equipments in future.