Rolls-Royce: Committed to India's progress

Kishore Jayaraman, President-India and South Asia, Rolls-Royce 

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Rolls-Royce has been a proud partner in India’s journey for over 90 years. Our India story began in 1932 when we powered the first commercial aircraft of Tata Aviation, and the first flight of the Indian Air Force soon after. Since then, we have been strengthening our presence here as a provider of complex power and propulsion solutions across the Civil Aerospace, Defence and Power Systems sectors. 

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We believe India holds great promise and offers multiple opportunities for all our businesses, and we are well-positioned to meet the demands of and create opportunities in this market. 

 

Powering India’s Defence

Today, over 750 Rolls-Royce engines are powering several Indian military aircraft including combat and strike aircraft, trainers, strategic airlift, VVIP and surveillance aircraft. In addition, our mtu engines power the Indian Army’s Arjun Main Battle Tank and several vessels of the Indian Navy and Coast Guard, with service teams present at several locations along

the coastline. 

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We are focused on creating sustainable value in the Indian defence sector, and are well-positioned with the right products, experience and capabilities to deliver end-to-end power and propulsion solutions tailored to meet the country’s defence needs. Our offerings include power and propulsion solutions and co-development capabilities in the aero-defence segment, as well as a full portfolio of advanced offerings in the naval-marine segment, including hybrid-electric and full-electric propulsion solutions for next-generation warships. We believe there is immense potential for our offerings in this market as India looks at modernisation and indigenisation to bolster its defence capabilities.

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Power of Trent for India’s fast-growing aviation sector

Rolls-Royce has been one of the leading providers of engines for the civil aviation sector. Our Trent turbofan aircraft engines have been powering a significant share of wide-body aircraft flying to and from India on international routes, and our Trent XWB engines will soon power the new A350 fleet of widebody aircraft for Air India. In addition, we power a significant share of the business aviation market in India. With strong engineering capabilities and an ecosystem of sourcing and manufacturing in-country, we look forward to playing a greater role in the growing Indian civil aerospace sector. 

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Further, as India moves towards adopting greener aviation technologies and practices, we are well-positioned with sustainable solutions like SAF-compatibility and digital tools that can drive efficiency and improve the environmental performance of our products. India has great potential with its strong engineering and digital talent base, and we are leveraging these strengths both with in-house teams as well as with our partners here. 

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Creating capabilities for the future

In line with the country’s ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ vision, Rolls-Royce has been supporting the creation of a strong aerospace and defence ecosystem in India through local partnerships. Our association with Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL) dating back to 1956, could be termed the original ‘Make in India’ story. We are the only company to have successfully transferred combat jet engine technology to India and have also collaborated with partners to transfer technology for turboshaft and turboprop engines. 

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We have established two strategic joint ventures (JV) in India – our JV with HAL called International Aerospace Manufacturing Pvt. Ltd., manufactures over 160 high-precision components for the Trent family of civil engines as well as components for defence engines. Our other JV with Force Motors, called Force mtu Power Systems, has transferred the entire production line for the Series 1600 engines and generator sets to India to serve both local and global markets. We also source various components from Indian partners including Tata, Bharat Forge, and Godrej & Boyce, among others.

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Over the years, we have invested in nurturing high-capability engineering talent in India, both for our Civil Aerospace engineering ecosystem as well as for our Power Systems business. Today, over 2,000 high-skilled engineers in India work with Rolls-Royce, including in-house talent and through outsourced agreements with Infosys, TCS and others, contributing to various global development programmes. Our team of digital engineers and data scientists at Rolls-Royce Data Labs in Bengaluru support the digital transformation of our business - they are involved in creating solutions based on advanced data analytics, AI, machine learning and more, to enable greater efficiencies in various operations. 

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Co-creating technology in India

With our commitment towards India stronger than ever, we are focused on developing technology and capabilities within the country as we believe this will be key to realising the country’s self-reliance vision. Rolls-Royce have steadily and successfully built a robust ecosystem of strategic partners, suppliers, manufacturing, talent, digital solutions and service capabilities in India. With such ecosystem strengths, we believe that the company is well-positioned to be a part of co-development programmes for combat engine technology that will create the foundations for future technology development in India, by India, for India and for the world.