INDIAN DEFENSE STARTUP ECOSYSTEM AND BEYOND

The foundations and reforms of Indian defense industry started back in 2001 with introduction of Private industries and collaboration of Public-Private partnerships was found to be promising and it significantly allowed Private players to come up and be as joint development and production partners for many DPSUS and some of Private players went to become as innovative organizations and rest remained as production partners with Foreign OEM'S . The major breakthrough achieved in changing the landscape dynamics of Indian defense ecosystem was achieved back in 2018 when government of India introduced a innovation body called IDEX which comes under Ministry of defense which aimed primarily to incubate and provide an unique opportunity for startups and individual innovators to come up with brilliant idea and ability to solve current industry problems which can be addressed by these Startups over Foreign original equipment manufacturers . This allowed Startups and MSMES to be part of supply and development ecosystem to foster indigenization and playing a pivotal role in Atmanirbhar Bharat and around 323 startups officially registered as part of IDEX winning contest programs and MSME'S have been a back bone for these Startups and Private players for providing supply chain and logistics which are needed for these business to run

The Indian defense startups , Though they are proving their mettle day by day and a fantastic opportunity from defense forces made a significant customer base segment where forces are now top priority and always been for them since 2018 and this confidence paved to prove that the role of Government and Armed forces support for Atmanirbhar Bharat program have show- cased it "seeds" where Startups now have been largest market share for the forces requirements to be procured after DPSU'S , Private players and this trend will increase in further folds in coming years and this achievement is not ordinary ! Thanks to policy makers , Academia , Armed forces leadership and the Young minds for their work given to the nation building ! The most important factor for these early stage Startups to be available , run and develop the products for the forces must rely on financial capital , ease of doing startups in defense sector , constant support and guidance from incubators and defense personals , encouragement of diversifying technology development and understanding the Product/Market fit value is crucial to be in the defense sector .

Armed forces procure any equipment's based on their qualitative requirements issued from higher authorities who filed those requirements based on what they prefer ! The qualitative requirement standard of forces are very high and they need best out of best equipment's for their use ! But the problem is some part of Indian defense industrial ecosystem that consist of private and startups players does not have such experience in terms of handling and financing as well as product fit market ! Generally Indian defense startups are the early or in growing stage where they need continues orders in terms of Spares , Raw materials , Software or even products which requires consistent upgrades and development , This is where the forces need to understand that complicated requirements to be addressed such a way that chance should be given to startups to build sophisticated equipment's of future but at same time they need more support and current support is not enough to meet and run their business or sustain for longer term ! Government and industry policy makers can sit together and divide the requirement's for forces based on priority and technological availability and time period such a way that even if forces decide to import if they find that our products are not suitable for staff requirements at least quarter or some part of weapon architecture ca be developed by startups without or with even celebrating with OEMS because at the end of the day startups founders are not merely working for patriotism ! At the end of the day they need profits to sustain and stay longer and after all it was from investors or financial agencies !

Despite these roadblocks where these are common everywhere but our Startups and the way India is moving towards aspiring great power by its economy projected to generate from entrepreneurship , Its obvious that a day will come such that the world will celebrate the Combined Indian startup ecosystem where defense will be part of such diverse and unique startup ecosystem development where we can proudly Raise our Tri -color flag on top of the world and the defense startups have a great future and the true national integration with support will change the spectrum of our country ad bring back the official name of our nation as "SONE KE CHIDIYIA "