In an interview to PTI, Sashi Mukundan, the executive vice president of Rolls-Royce India, elaborating on the move, said the company is planning for a “big investment” in the country, and listed developing a next-generation aero engine in India as a priority to power the combat jets that New Delhi will produce under the Advanced Medium Combat Aircraft (AMCA) programme.
Mukundan also highlighted how Rolls-Royce can contribute significantly to addressing India’s requirement for electric propulsion capability for boosting the Indian Navy’s combat prowess.
The AMCA engine core can be modified into a naval marine engine and it can also be used for electric propulsion, he suggested, noting that Rolls-Royce is among a very few engine makers globally to have the capability to “marinize the aero engine”.
Mukundan, without divulging specific details, said Rolls-Royce was eyeing making a significant investment to expand its footprint in India, noting that the country has “scale, policy clarity and a strong push” towards a defence and industrial ecosystem that is expanding rapidly and becoming more sophisticated.
“If everything goes well, it would be a significant investment. It’ll be big enough that people will notice it, but I don’t want to put a number to it. What matters is the impact of this investment, which would be the development of the entire value chain and ecosystem here across sectors that we operate in,” he said.
The top Rolls-Royce executive said the company will firm up two Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with two defence public sector undertakings in India. While one pact is for manufacturing the engines for the Arjun tanks, the other is for engines for the future ready combat vehicles.
In October, CEO Tufan Erginbilgic, during a business roundtable had conveyed to Prime Minister Narendra Modi that India is going to be very critical for Rolls-Royce going forward.
“We have developed two other home markets outside the UK — the US and Germany. We want to make India our next one. What do we mean by that? We want to do everything across the field, and it’s not just defence,” Mukundan said.
“That ambition cuts across defence, naval propulsion, land systems, manufacturing, advanced engineering skills and technology development, all of which align closely with India’s own priorities,” he said.
On the engines for AMCA, Mukundan said extensive discussions and background work are underway on how to move forward.
“If India is thinking about next-generation engines, Rolls-Royce is probably the best partner. We have the capability, we have the experience both in India and globally, and we have repeatedly demonstrated that we can do it,” he said.
Mukundan said all of the engine design work can be done in India, with the relevant technology transferred and all new intellectual property (IP) rights can be jointly owned with India.
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