Thales has presence in India for 70 years and is headquartered in Noida, Uttar Pradesh. We have other operational offices and sites spread across New Delhi, Hyderabad, Bengaluru, Mumbai, Pune, among others and have more than 1,800 employees working with Thales and its joint ventures in India.
As India progresses towards it ambitious initiatives of “Make in India” and “AtmanirbharBharat” or self-reliance, it brings up huge prospects for local and global organisations across defence and aerospace sectors among others to work together and strengthen the industrial ecosystem in the country. Thales, with its purpose of building a future we can trust, has been striving to closely work with its customers and cater to their requirements with the best possible solutions. Backed by its strong presence in diverse verticals like defence, aerospace, transportation and digital identity and security, Thales has been a resolute partner to India’s growth story by sharing its niche technologies and expertise.
Thales’ 'Make in India’ program is growing every year, helping Indian industry to play a greater role in world markets. The Group has steadily built advanced in-country capabilities across manufacturing, critical systems and services in India through local teams and collaborations.
Thales' India headquarter is smart office that also has a bigger engineering competence centre dedicated to its digital identity and security business. This new office is a key stake for Thales in India; it symbolizes the Group’s long-term commitment to the country, and demonstrates how Thales is growing bigger and becoming more local here.
Bringing in its expertise in delivering high-end technology solutions, Thales has formed various co-operative partnerships with public and private sector industries like with Bharat electronics Ltd (BEL) - dedicated to radars and Reliance Aerostructures Ltd. for electronic warfare and radar. With over 75 local supply chain partners in the country, engaged in its global supply chain across defence and civil markets, generating more than 1900 indirect jobs in India, Thales has been transforming the supply chain ecosystem in the country in preparation for the execution of defence contracts.
Thales is a proud member of the Rafale India team led by Dassault Aviation. It has also successfully undertaken the upgrade of the Mirage 2000 programme together with Dassault Aviation while working closely with HAL, among other key programmes of the Indian Air Force, Indian Navy and Indian Army.
In 2020, Thales and MKU Limited have signed an MoU for strategic co-operation in the development and production of optronic devices such as ELFIE night vision device for India & the world at Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh in India. Ind the same year, Thales also joined hands with Bharat Forge to develop cooperation for F90 rifles.
In 2021, Thales and Bharat Dynamics Limited (BDL) have signed a teaming agreement to work in partnership on the STARStreak/ Laser Beam Riding MANPAD (LBRM) system Air Defence system with the support of both the Governments of India and the United Kingdom. Through this agreement, BDL will become a part of the STARStreak/ Laser Beam Riding MANPAD (LBRM) system global supply chain and will have an opportunity to play a role in export of Indian manufactured components to existing and future LBRM system Air Defence customers, including the UK Armed Forces. This agreement will also provide the opportunity for BDL to offer a ‘Make in India’ LBRM solution to the Indian Government, with a capability that will match the immediate air defence needs of the Indian Army and Air force, and with 60% of the system manufactured in India.
Thales has been continually investing in R&D activities in India. It has two Engineering Competence Centres (ECC) in the country. The ECC in Bengaluru is working on some high value-added software domains - air traffic management, complex avionics systems, cockpit, flight management, connectivity & video systems, radar softwares. It is also creating a capability in advanced hardware technology - Radio Frequency/ designs for radars & communications, high performance processing units and in general airborne digital processing functions. The other ECC is in Delhi NCR region, based in Noida and focused on the Digital Identity and Security.
The ECCs and network of our local supply chain partners, help Thales to continue its contribution towards job creation in India. With current headcount of over 1400 R&D engineers, we are targeting to ramp up the total count of engineers (Thales and its partners) in coming years.
All these collaborations and projects help Thales to continue contributing to the government’s ambition of positioning India as a global manufacturing hub. Thales strives to accelerate innovation and digital transformation to serve the needs of India and continue contributing towards “Make in India” as well as “exports from India”.
