India
TASL CTO says India needs Create in India
Livemint··1 Oct
Tata Advanced Systems CTO R Muralidharan told Livemint that defence self-reliance includes designing systems in India, not only manufacturing them. He said India can produce many systems under licence but still lacks know-how to upgrade them locally. He named high-end chips and sensors as the technology gap. TASL invests in R&D and works with DRDO on indigenous solutions, he said.
Prism
What It Means For You
- Muralidharan argues procurement that stops at licensed assembly leaves upgrades dependent on foreign know-how.
- He points to chips, sensors and critical raw materials as the hardware gaps that still block full indigenous builds.
- Readers tracking Atmanirbhar defence goals will hear Create in India framed as design ownership, not only factory output.
What's Happening
- The TASL CTO also holds a Professor of Practice role at IIT Tirupati.
- He said few private firms and DRDO create intellectual property, while many others stay in licensed manufacturing.
- He described licensed manufacturing as a possible first step before firms design systems themselves.
Where the Capability Gap Sits
- Muralidharan said talent, design capability and software expertise are available, but high-end hardware is not.
- He said technology sovereignty covers materials and chips as much as software.
- On AI, he said India is generating large language models and also specialised sovereign smaller models on Indian data.
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