One Step at a Time

Smruti D

On February 4, at the recently concluded DefExpo 2020, Baba Kalyani, Chairman, Kalyani Group, spoke about the company’s journey and transition in designing and manufacturing of defence equipment and their ambitions of venturing into different sectors within defence manufacturing in the coming years.

Kalyani Group’s stand at DefExpo 2020

Kalyani expressed his desire for India to become an exporter and not remain only an importer of defence equipments. He also stated that the group aimed at becoming an artillery powerhouse by 2030, entering areas like digital and Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), nanotechnology, composites and embedded systems among others.

“We’re the world’s largest forging company today and we have tremendous repository of knowledge in the area of material, metallurgical processes and we have brought that to the fore in terms of building our capabilities in the area of artillery. In a short span of six years, we have created six artillery platforms, four of them have been tested at the ranges of the Indian armed forces and they have performed extremely well,” said Kalyani.

It was in 2012 that Bharat Forge entered into the defence arena and decided on manufacturing artillery guns. With their expertise in metallurgy, their foray into defence manufacturing did not seem far-fetched.

Kalyani Group started with procuring off-the-shelf 155/45mm Austri