what is an ecosystem? The ecosystem is one that encourages the growth of a particular sector of industry or product. So the ecosystem includes either the creation or existence of the infrastructure which includes again for design and manufacture, the manpower trained to handle the technologies involved, facility for training the manpower, test facilities, certification, processes, a supply chain, availability of specialised raw materials if there are any, and so on – it can be expanded without much of a limit. So the ecosystem as applied to the aerospace and defence includes the inclusion of all these parameters.

1. How do you integrate SMEs into the
Indian Aerospace and Defence
ecosystem?
G Raj Narayan
www.grajnarayan.com
twitter.com/grajnarayan

2. Let me ask a question myself, what is an ecosystem? The
ecosystem is one that encourages the growth of a particular
sector of industry or product. So the ecosystem includes
either the creation or existence of the infrastructure which
includes again for design and manufacture, the manpower
trained to handle the technologies involved, facility for
training the manpower, test facilities, certification, processes,
a supply chain, availability of specialised raw materials if
there are any, and so on – it can be expanded without much
of a limit. So the ecosystem as applied to the aerospace and
defence includes the inclusion of all these parameters. And
with particular reference to the aerospace sector which uses
very specialised aluminium alloys, titanium alloys, rivets, nuts
and screws that needs to be of special grade or tested grade
and certified as airworthy. Now if we don’t have any of these
present within the country, then the ecosystem is missing.
Even in the case of availability of trained engineering
manpower, we don’t have the ecosystem where you have
either aerospace engineers or mechanical engineers trained
for working or operating in the aerospace sector. So we don’t
have the availability of these various kinds of resources in the
country and therefore the aerospace and defence sector in
the country is unable to grow to the extent that it needs to
grow. This is where the creation of ecosystem is extremely
important and therefore the Government is the one that
needs to address these by setting up of laboratories, test
facilities, training institutes or may be even incentivising
SMEs or large organisations to conduct training programmes,
seminars, workshops etc, etc. And this is where the
Government has to play a very major role in incentivising and
facilitating the growth of the aerospace and defence sector
in this country.