Bharat Forge’s journey into India’s defence manufacturing sector stands as a testament to the transformative impact of the ‘Make in India’ initiative. Chairman Baba Kalyani recently recounted the company’s early struggles and eventual breakthrough, highlighting how entrenched scepticism and policy barriers once stifled indigenous innovation.
In 2012, Bharat Forge exhibited its first artillery gun at a defence expo in Delhi, only to be met with disbelief and even ridicule from the military establishment. “A lot of army guys walked by, some laughed at it.
Not a single guy stopped to even see what the hell it was,” Kalyani recalled. The prevailing mindset was that only foreign suppliers or public sector units could deliver such complex systems, leaving private Indian firms on the sidelines.
Kalyani’s inspiration to diversify into defence stemmed from the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis and his personal connections to the armed forces. Recognising that artillery guns are fundamentally products of advanced forging and metallurgy—areas where Bharat Forge already excelled—he questioned why India could not leverage its own expertise to build such equipment.
However, the policy landscape was hostile to private sector participation. Despite a full technology transfer from Sweden’s Bofors in the 1980s, the government restricted defence manufacturing to state-run entities, locking out private innovators like Bharat Forge. Kalyani’s direct appeals to policymakers, including a 2011 meeting with then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defence Minister AK Antony, were met with indifference and no follow-up.
This climate of exclusion persisted until a major policy shift under the Narendra Modi-led government. The launch of the ‘Make in India’ campaign in December 2014 marked a turning point. Kalyani was involved in drafting new policy inputs at a defence conclave that year, setting the stage for reforms that would open the sector to private players.
The real breakthrough came with Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar’s overhaul of the Defence Procurement Procedure in 2016, which streamlined processes and addressed long-standing implementation challenges.
Kalyani argues that India’s earlier reluctance to involve private enterprise allowed countries like China and South Korea to surge ahead in defence technology. Innovation, he says, was stifled by bureaucratic red tape and a public sector monopoly that prioritised paperwork over creativity.
The shift to a more open, competitive environment enabled Bharat Forge to leverage its metallurgical strengths, offering artillery guns at half the price of imports—demonstrating not just cost savings but also indigenous capability.
Today, Bharat Forge’s artillery systems, once dismissed and ignored, have become symbols of India’s strategic self-reliance and industrial ambition. Defence manufacturing is now a core business vertical for the company, with its products made entirely in India using domestic materials and expertise. The transformation, Kalyani emphasises, was driven as much by private conviction and perseverance as by policy reform. “We had the tech, we had the price advantage—but no one believed. Now they do,” he concluded.
Bharat Forge’s story underscores how the ‘Make in India’ initiative catalysed a broader revolution in the country’s defence sector, unlocking potential that had long been suppressed by policy inertia and institutional scepticism.
Based On India Today Report