Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) chairman G. Satheesh Reddy on Sunday said the organisation is keen to work with industry and academia to indigenise products to reduce dependency on imports.
Mr Reddy was speaking on the sidelines of the inaugural session of the four-day IEEE InCAP 2018. He said the DRDO is populating a list of products, including spare parts, which will soon be displayed on its website for startups, industry and academia to access and indigenise.
“We are making a list — right from spare parts and systems such as electronic systems and other types of systems, which we are importing. This will be available to the public which can indigenise and we will be able to buy (these products),” Mr Reddy said.
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The DRDO chairman added that the list would be made public in two to three months and the products would be worth “a few thousand crores”.
Touching upon the organisation’s collaborative efforts, Mr Reddy said, “We are working with academia, and research and development institutes across the country. We are working on materials in a big way and have established centres of excellence (CoE).” He added that the CoE are in some of the IITs and Jadavpur University, Kolkata.
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Mr Reddy said the collaborations are in various fields such as artificial intelligence, deep learning and robotic systems. He expressed interest in setting up a CoE for antennas as well.
During his talk at the event, Mr Reddy pointed out the evolving scenario for antennas and said that combat is dependent on communication. He said that there is a need to produce state-of-the-art products to export them.
An exhibition with around 25 sponsors and exhibitors and paper presentations were also held as part of the event.