By Anantha Krishnan M
Express News Service
Bangalore: Defence gurus from Ordnance Factories, experts from Defence Public Sector Undertakings, specialists from the indigenous cells of Indian armed forces and technology practitioners from micro, small and medium enterprises (MSME) are set to flock Bangalore during the first week of March. Amidst B-2-B sessions and handshakes, they will get rub shoulders with some of the inspiring names in India's defence and aerospace sector.
Choreographed by the Ministry of MSMEs and directed by the National Small Industries Corporation (NSIC), the second edition of 'MSME DEFEXPO 2012' has in the supporting role the Industries Department of Karnataka government. Close to 200 MSMEs from all over India, with half of them from Karnataka alone, will plug and play their vision on offsets in addition to exhibiting their strengths in the defence production.
In a telecon with Express from Delhi on Thursday, Udaya Kumar, Director, Planning and Marketing, NSIC, said that with the opening up of the defence sector, the MSMEs could strike gold making the right moves. “Today MSMEs have highly competitive production mandate with great flexibility, extensive diversity and lower cost of inputs. The global trends in knowledge, innovation, downsizing and networking have reduced the gap which had once separated large firms and MSMEs. Compared to the first expo in Hyderabad, the Bangalore one scheduled from March 2-4 will be one opportunity for MSMEs to hear from the masters in defence production,” Udaya Kumar said.
Among the biggies to be present are Boeing, Lockheed Martin, SAAB and Dassault Aviation with Russia sending a high-level trade commission. “We have confirmations from over a dozen global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) so far,” Udaya Kumar said. On March 3, KPMG is organising a day-long technical workshop covering a wide range of topics including, MRO, certification, opportunities with global OEMs among others.
The expo will also have a separate segment for homeland security – which has seen some explosive growth since the Mumbai terror attacks. “This will be one segment that will catch the attention considering India's decision to open up the homeland security market to private sector players. The decision has created yet another wind of opportunity for MSMEs,” Uday said.
