T-Hub to focus on innovation, mfg in defence & aerospace

Hyderabad: City-based innovation ecosystem enabler T-Hub has hosted the first edition of National Defence and Aerospace Innovation Summit 2024 (DAIS) in Hyderabad on Wednesday. The event brought together CEOs of corporates and startups, Ministry of Defence, and other stakeholders, to discuss strengthening of innovation and manufacturing in the defence and aerospace sector. T-Hub, also unveiled its Defence Vertical to support defence tech startups in increasing their success rate.

The business incubator called for defence and aerospace tech startups to enroll for the cohorts/ programmes, of four to six months duration, to get connected to mentors, manufacturers, service providers, and investors among others.

Speaking to Bizz Buzz, M Srinivas Rao, CEO, T-Hub, said: “DAIS is a forum to establish connections, networks, and figure out cumulatively on how can large corporates, and armed forces leverage on the work being done by startups. India has 600 defence tech startups. Challenges that defence tech startups are facing is lack of visibility and branding, we are hoping that a forum like this will help startups get visibility. Access to funding is another ongoing challenge that we are looking to address.”

T-Hub entered a MoU with SIDBI for SIDBI-T-Hub Funding Programme, and Pavestone Capital for exclusive funding pool to defence tech startups. Besides funding, T-Hub’s officially launched Defence Vertical will support these startups with market access, mentorship, and community forum where startups with common issues can reach out to the larger ecosystem or for peer-to-peer collaboration. It has also partnered Kavachh, the International Institute For Space Studies and Research (IISSR), the Directorate of Defence Research and Development- Israel, Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL), Collins Aerospace, the College of Defence Management and the Indian School of Business.

“We have been working over the past one year to build a dedicated Defence Vertical in T-Hub, as Hyderabad has got the ability to be the leader in the defence and aerospace sector. This city has got five aviation training academies, more than 1,000 engineering precision manufacturers, highest concentration of PSUs, defence labs, and manufacturers like TASL and Airbus. If they are all brought onto one platform, this city has got the opportunity to position itself as the Defence Hub,” said Anish Anthony, COO, T-Hub.

A Defence Advisory Council has been created to support the Defence Vertical. The vertical will support iDEX startups, and other interested defence tech startups. It will speed up communication with the Ministry of Defence’s Innovation Organisation, and be an interface between armed forces, academia, startups, mentors, investors and corporates. The CEO said that T-Hub, as an innovation center, is part of the Defence Ministry’s programme called iDEX (Innovation for Defence Excellence), which is run by Defence Innovation Organisation, under which T-Hub has incubated about 49 startups from the last four years.

Elaborating further, Anthony said, “Startups have their advantage of being agile, can incorporate innovation and technology faster, on the other hand corporates can manufacture on scale, are well versed with procurement system, long gestation period without thinking about cost element. The Defence Vertical will support iDEX and other startups by bringing them on a common platform with the corporates to fructify the vision of taking defence and aerospace industry ahead in India.”

Dignitaries such as Giridhar Aramane, Defence Secretary, Ministry of Defence, Government of India; Jayesh Ranjan, Special Chief Secretary of Industries, Telangana government, Dr G Satheesh Reddy, president, The Aeronautical Society of India; BVR Mohan Reddy, Founder and Chairman Cyient; Satya Prakash Singh, Chief General Manager, SIDBI along with members from Defence Advisory Committee (DAC), were present at the Summit.