By IANS,
New Delhi : European aerosapce major Thales announced Thursday it had received official authorisation from the Foreign Investment Promotion Board to form a joint venture company with India’s Samtel Avionics Ltd. to locally develop and produce helmet-mounted sight and display systems for Indian Air Force (IAF) combat jets.
Samtel-Thales Avionics Ltd. is Thales’s second JV in India, the first being with Rolta Ltd., “and the official approval of the JV company is entirely in line with Thales’s ambition to become a local player,” it said in a statement.
Fran�ois Dupont, Thales’s country corporate director for India, said: “This is a key step for Thales and its ambitious development plan in India.
“The Indian defence ministry encourages national development and this partnership with a national industry makes Thales a very credible player for future programmes,” Dupont added.
The JV company will locally develop and produce helmet-mounted sight and display systems and modern avionics for the Indian and export defence markets.
Systems aimed at the IAF’s combat aircraft “represent the main objective of the JV company, and the activity will quickly expand to include other products”, the Thales statement said.
Based in Noida, it will provide the basis for all future aerospace development for Thales in India.
“The resulting Indian avionics systems will serve both Thales’s and Samtel’s requirements, and would also be eligible to help meet Thales’s offset obligations for its different programmes with the Indian defence ministry”, the statement said.
The JV Company will also ensure local added value support and integrated maintenance services for the systems it produces for the Indian market, it added.
Thales has been operating in India since 1953, participating in the creation of local companies such as Bharat Electronics Ltd. (BEL). The group’s permanent representative office in Delhi has been operating since 1970 and now employs over 300 people.
Thales has stepped up its presence in India over recent years, setting up several new local companies.
In New Delhi, Thales International India Pvt. Ltd. was created in 2003 to provide IT and support services for local civil and military programmes. In 2006, Thales opened an office in Mumbai, followed by one in Cochin in 2007.
A further initiative in 2006 was the creation of the joint venture, Rolta Thales Ltd. (RTL), in the fields of C4ISR (command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance) and homeland security.
Thales Software India Pvt. Ltd. was established in Chennai in 2007, to develop software for its worldwide customer base. In 2009, Thales will open offices in Gwalior for the support of the IAF’s Mirage-2000 fleet and in Bangalore to improve its relationship with BEL and Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd. (HAL), as well as with private industrial players.