‘We Want to Promote C-27J Aircraft in India’
Country Head, India Liaison Office, Finmeccanica, Paolo Girasole
What are your expansion plans for India?
India is a very important market for us. After Italy, we consider the UK and the US as our biggest domestic markets. With the recent acquisition of DRS Technologies in the US, we have further consolidated our position there. Now we want to expand in other countries. Three such markets are India, Russia and China; of these India is our priority number one. Both India and Italy have a MoU, which allows us to interact in the market here with a very large portfolio. Today, there are no particular restrictions imposed upon us by the Italian government on our expansion plans in India. However, we are first concentrating on improving our commercial base in India by promoting the vast range of our products. The idea is to create awareness about our range and what we can offer to India. But India is not a country where you come, sell your products and go away. This is the country that offers many opportunities for long term investment. Hence, we are looking at creating strategic partnerships with Indian PSUs and the private companies, eventually paving the way for joint ventures. We also want to acquire certain companies in sectors where there are no limitations by the Indian government, for instance information technology, engineering services and so on. Our presence in India is increasing gradually and more people from Finmeccanica are now getting posted to India.
In the defence electronics sector what can you offer to India?
When we talk of defence electronics, we are talking about command and control activities like C4I, C4IR, avionics for military aircraft, radars and fire control radars. We also deal with dual technologies, which can have commercial and civil use. This apart, we also have a very large communication systems capability for all the three armed forces. One of our strengths is our radars and we produce a vast range. We are offering our radar to the Indian Navy and we recently succeeded in winning the contract for providing air traffic control radars for the Bangalore and Hyderabad international airports. We also have a huge capability in avionics. To give an example, almost 70 per cent of the avionics on board Eurofighter, which is competing in the Indian Air Force’s M-MRCA bid, is from Finmeccanica. Even though the Italian government’s participation in the project is not more that 20 per cent, our contribution to the aircraft is almost 36 per cent because we acquired all the avionics activities from the BAE Systems.
