Author Archives: Raj Narayan

About Raj Narayan

Founder of the Radel Group who has interests ranging from indigenous design & manufacturing for aviation, aerospace and defense sector, digital Indian musical instruments, to niche skill development. For more follow me on Twitter

Job-Ready From Day One

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The original article appeared in The Statesman

About 1.5 million engineers graduated from more than 3,500 engineering colleges across India in 2014, but how many of them are really employable in the core industries?

One of the studies (Aspiring Minds, Report 2014) says that only a shocking four to seven per cent of them are actually fit for jobs in the core engineering sectors. An earlier study by the World Bank (2010) showed that employers were not satisfied with the fresh engineering graduates they recruited. Graduates seemed to lack higher order thinking skills: analysing, evaluating and creating.

It is this gap between the existing education system and the actual industry requirement that needs to be met. The sunrise industries of aerospace, defence and electronics need thousands of skilled engineers for design as well as manufacture. Today, while we find many training institutes for software, even computer hardware and networking, there are very few training schools for engineers in core disciplines, especially electronics and aerospace engineering design, and none that include robust processes, documentation and project management.

Currently, the Radel Group has embarked on a novel initiative for the engineering fraternity aimed at mentoring and training them in a real industrial environment on live projects to make them industry-ready. The Drona School of Engineering Practice is a timely and unique initiative that focuses on creating skilled engineers, especially for the electronics, aerospace and defence sectors.

There are several areas where the “Apprenternship” programme offered by Drona differs from other training programmes. The most important one is the mentorship provided by veterans of industry and personal guidance from one of the most respected inventors of India. Another key differentiator is the hands-on work experience and exposure to live projects. The student gets an insight into the design and development cycle of defence and aerospace systems that meet global industry standards of performance, reliability and efficiency. The graduate is trained in systematic quality analysis and documentation processes that are essential for a manufacturing industry, especially in the A&D sector.

The “Apprentern” is provided soft-skills training and a working knowledge of how an industry operates. A fresh engineering graduate who opts for the Drona programme at Radel goes through a complete transformation of his/her thought process, through which critical, analytical and innovative skills blossom.

Training is provided in written and oral communication skills, business etiquette and time management. The engineer emerges at the end of the course as a confident and competent young and dynamic professional, with enhanced communication skills — in effect, industry-ready. Every industrialist is aware of the time, cost and effort of training fresh engineers. In most organisations, the first few months are spent in training new recruits, with literally no output. The Drona programme takes on the initial training effort of the industry and provides the employer with a trained engineer, ready for the job, so that the employer gets productivity from the new engineer right from day one.

The intensive six-month holistic programme, “Campus2Career”, offers several skilling programmes in embedded systems, avionics, electronics design and related domains comprising all aspects that are required to make a fresh engineer job-ready. The aspiring trainee can select from a variety of subject modules that have combinations of embedded software, embedded electronics design, avionics, mechanical Cad and PCB designs, technical documentation and project management, apart from a basic introduction to various facets of industry (production, planning, admin, HR, etc) and, importantly, soft skills such as verbal and written communication, time management and business etiquette.

The first session of Drona’s “Campus2Career” starts from 1 July 2015.

Creating a generation of Design Engineers for Make In India

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Core engineering skill is what every employer in an engineering industry looks for, in a fresh engineering graduate. Most freshers applying for jobs in this sector however, falter at the very first step – the screening test. Many cannot answer even the simplest high-school level question in physics or mathematics. Those that clear this small hurdle, fall at the next – the interview. Again, simple questions stump them. Yet, when questioned about the details, they are not able to explain anything.

Finally most of them admit that the project work was just bought out from small institutions or individuals who make a business out of it. The candidate who is finally hired by the company needs extensive training for 3 to 6 months, before any useful work is produced. Till then, there is zero output from the new employee. This story is true for many engineering industries. This is the kind of talent gap that they face.

As is well-known, the root cause for this is the over-emphasis of our education system, even at the undergraduate level, on rote-learning and theory, at the expense of practical application. Ultimately, this is counterproductive, because an engineer is basically one who has to apply theoretical principles in practice.

Tweet this:“While skilling the technician is important, creating a new generation of product designers is imperative”.

So, what is the solution? The student is helpless, as he is a prisoner of the system. So too are the teachers. It is not easy to overhaul the engineering education system, but solutions have to be found, to unlock the potential of these ‘rough diamonds’ – our engineering graduates, so that our goal of self-reliance in manufacturing through ‘Make in India’ can be achieved.

‘Make in India’ is about manufacturing our own products with IPRs owned by Indian companies. It is not about just manufacturing foreign products ‘under license’. Not long ago, we had Indian companies manufacturing ‘Indian TVs’ with component kits imported from abroad. But now, you have Korean and Japanese brands selling their TVs in India, but almost completely manufactured in China. Hence, the need of the hour is for Indian companies to learn to design and manufacture our own products.

So, how do we create a generation of design engineers that can produce innovative new products? Engineering students need to learn the practical application of each theoretical concept, and need inputs on multiple aspects related to the design and manufacture of even the simplest equipment. The very process of thinking, conceptualization, and designing elegant, reliable, rugged and power efficient products, whether in embedded software or electronic hardware, how to ‘marry’ the two, and adopting a well-documented design process, making sure that every aspect of the product life cycle is covered.

While these concepts can be explained at brief workshops, it is only through actual hands-on work on a live project that a student or fresh engineer can learn and understand the practical implications of each of them.

While skilling the technician is important, creating a new generation of product designers is imperative. Only this can ensure a sustainable and meaningful ‘Make in India’. Radel’s new venture ‘Drona School of Engineering practice’ does precisely this.

Make In India – But who will skill our Engineering Graduates?

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The USD 400 billion opportunity

The catch-phrase today in Indian Industry is ‘Make in India’. The estimated domestic demand for Electronics products alone, is of the order of USD 400 billion by 2020. Every entrepreneur in the manufacturing sector is aspiring to take a slice of this pie.

The Challenges

However, if Make in India is to become a reality, there has to be a focus on the product manufacturing sector. China today, is a giant economic power, because it is a manufacturing hub for almost everything across the globe. Unless we are self-sufficient in Manufacturing, we can never hope to match, leave alone overtake, our neighbour.To achieve this, as has been highlighted by many experts, several areas need urgent attention – such as our infrastructure, labour laws and tax laws. But by far the most important initiative needed is in making our engineers employable. This is the greatest hurdle in the realisation of the goal of ‘Make in India’. Without competent engineers to drive the programme, how can the campaign even take off? How will we create our own products?

One step further – from Make in India to Design in India

In the Aerospace and Defence sector, how will India transform from being one of the largest importers of defence equipment, into being self-sufficient in defence products and then onwards to become an exporter? We need to make our engineering graduates skilled not only in Manufacturing but in Design.

Tweet this: We need to not just Make in India, but Create in India, Design in India and Innovate in India, so as to create and own all the intellectual property ourselves.

For this, we need to skill our engineers not just as computer operators but as intelligent designers and engineers in practice.

Why do we need to skill engineers?

There has been a lot of emphasis of late, on ‘Skilling India’. Most of the initiatives under this program are focused on skilling the workforce at the technician level – electrician, machine operator, etc. There is no recognition of the crying need for our fresh engineering graduates to be made job-ready with hard-core engineering domain skills. Reports suggest that out of about 1.5 million engineers graduating from more than 3500 engineering colleges across India in 2014, only a shocking 4 to 7 % of engineers are actually fit for jobs in the core engineering sectors.

Tweet this: Studies also indicate that employers are not satisfied with the fresh graduates they recruit, and that ‘Graduates seem to lack higher-order thinking skills (analyzing, evaluating and creating)’.

There is a huge demand from the core engineering industries for practical engineers who have hands-on experience. We need to close this large gap between the existing education system and the actual industry requirement.

Today, while we find many training institutes for software, even computer hardware (assembly & troubleshooting) and networking, there are very few training schools for engineers in core engineering disciplines, especially Electronics and Aerospace Engineering Design, and none that include robust processes, documentation and project management. Industries spend several months training them on these essential skills.

In view of the need faced by Engineering students and the Indian Manufacturing Industry, Radel (a well-known name in the Aerospace and Consumer Electronics sectors) has embarked on a novel initiative – Drona, school for engineering practice, that mentors and trains graduates and fresh industry recruits in a real industrial environment with exposure to exciting live projects, to make them industry-ready.

How do you integrate SMEs into the Indian Aerospace and Defence ecosystem?

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Let me ask a question myself, what is an ecosystem? The ecosystem is one that encourages the growth of a particular sector of industry or product. So the ecosystem includes either the creation or existence of the infrastructure which includes again for design and manufacture, the manpower trained to handle the technologies involved, facility for training the manpower, test facilities, certification, processes, a supply chain, availability of specialised raw materials if there are any, and so on – it can be expanded without much of a limit. So the ecosystem as applied to the aerospace and defence includes the inclusion of all these parameters. And with particular reference to the aerospace sector which uses very specialised aluminium alloys, titanium alloys, rivets, nuts and screws that needs to be of special grade or tested grade and certified as airworthy. Now if we don’t have any of these present within the country, then the ecosystem is missing. Even in the case of availability of trained engineering manpower, we don’t have the ecosystem where you have either aerospace engineers or mechanical engineers trained for working or operating in the aerospace sector. So we don’t have the availability of these various kinds of resources in the country and therefore the aerospace and defence sector in the country is unable to grow to the extent that it needs to grow. This is where the creation of ecosystem is extremely important and therefore the Government is the one that needs to address these by setting up of laboratories, test facilities, training institutes or may be even incentivising SMEs or large organisations to conduct training programmes, seminars, workshops etc etc. And this is where the Government has to play a very major role in incentivising and facilitating the growth of the aerospace and defence sector in this country.

Is ‘Technology Transfer’ required for Indian Industries to succeed in MakeInIndia?

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I am one of those who believe that we do not need any transfer of technology at all. In the past we had transfer of technology as part of projects that we got from British, Russian the French and many other countries. These were for the licensed manufacture of aircraft, transport aircraft, fighter aircraft, battle tanks and trucks, for example Tatra. But then we have not taken the additional steps of extracting information and knowledge that we have got, that we have paid for, and then taking the next few steps to develop them and create our own technologies. There is no rocket technology or rocket science involved in routine equipment, be it a communication equipment, navigation equipment or power plant.

The only area where there is high tech science involved is in the design and manufacture of advanced jet engines that are required for a jet aircraft. If you leave that aside, all the other equipment and systems that go on board on aircraft or battle tank are available with us. If we have been able to put satellite around Mars or If we have been able to land a satellite on to the surface of the moon then what is it we lack?

It is only the question of applying the science that we learned, and designing our own products, trying them out, if there have been deficiencies, use the knowledge gained and improve upon it, and then reach the ultimate goal of having our own equipment, systems as well as the platforms. This is what we need to do and there is absolutely no need for us to go out of this country seeking transfer of technology. After all, what is the technology we receive from abroad? They are only manufacturing technology for manufacture of an aircraft or its shell and stuffing it with equipment then that are imported from abroad. So we need to develop the equipment and systems that go on to the shell, and thereby increase the indigenous content of our platforms rather than go out again and get the technology for manufacturing of the shell, be it a 4th generation or 5th generation aircraft or battle tank. We need to look inwards and get the technology that is available within ourselves whether it is in our educational institutions or in R&D labs, for the manufacturing establishment. All we need to do is put our heads and hands together to solve our own problems.

Digital veena inventor who beefed up IAF’s firepower

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An entrepreneur who has won a patent for a digital veena, and also designed a mechanism that fires rockets at a command from a computer aboard the Indian Air Force’s Jaguar aircraft? Incongruous but true. The entrepreneurial career of G Raj Narayan, 66, founder and managing director of Bengaluru’s Radel Group, has been guided by his twin passions – aerospace and music.

He spent 10 years as a design engineer at the state-owned Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) before disillusionment turned the thoughts of this post-graduate from IIT Madras towards entrepreneurship. He finally left HAL in mid-1979.

Within three months he was sub-contracting for Bharat Heavy Electricals Ltd, supplying electrical coils after investing his savings of Rs 10,000 in a coil winding machine. Together, the group’s two companies – Radel Electronics Pvt. Ltd. (which makes security systems and musical instruments and accounts for 90 per cent of group revenues) and Radel Advanced Technology Pvt. Ltd. (the aerospace business) – employ 80 people and have sales revenues of Rs 10 crore.

Radel is still a small enterprise. But Raj Narayan is working with the aviation wing of the Indian Navy, and hopes to get business from the Army too, since Radel is one of the few Indian players to be certified by the Centre for Military Airworthiness Certification – a Defence Research and Development Organisation lab. “I am looking at 100 per cent growth in the next two years, possibly even 150 per cent, if ‘Make in India’ takes off.” Raj Narayan concedes that for nearly 10 years after he started in business, he continued with his “garage mindset”, and it was only when he won an award for electronics in 1987 that he thought, “I must shift to an industrial estate in order to become a bigger player.”

He has taken care to ensure that R&D is Radel’s core strength. “The R&D team gradually grew, but took a quantum jump when the company set up its facility in Electronics City in 1995. The team now has about 16 engineers who design the electronic circuits, the software, the printed circuit boards, the mechanical housings and structures, the plastic cabinets and everything else that contributes to complete product design,” he says.

The disadvantages of being small are repeatedly felt. Though his aerospace company alone has orders in hand worth Rs 1 crore, working capital is hard to get from public sector banks. However, Raj Narayan turned one such disadvantage into a business opportunity. He found it hard to recruit engineering talent. Moreover, new recruits, once trained, would soon depart for greener pastures. So he set up the Drona Centre for Excellence as a division of Radel, “primarily to produce trained and productive engineers out of fresh graduates”.

Since Radel also possesses core aerospace domain expertise, “Drona also offers training courses in avionics systems, besides electronic product design. This allows the trainees and engineers a hands-on exposure to live projects that they can also see physically implemented for a real client,” says Raj Narayan.

This finishing school is the group’s third revenue stream, and so far it has taken in two batches of 30 students each and trained them, after which they were free to leave and join other companies. The centre also holds short-term courses for engineering students during their holidays.
Though in his mid-sixties, Raj Narayan intends to continue at the helm of Radel for six or seven years more. “I am in the process of grooming a second line of leadership, who can take over when I retire,” he explains.

The original article appeared on Business-Standard

Role of Government to facilitate the active participation of SMEs

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The Government of India needs to nurture and assist SMEs with proven track records. SMEs who have specialised in their own domains which may be electronics,hydraulics, pneumatics or mechatronics and so on need to be provided facilities of interacting with government agencies, manufacturing establishments, DPSUs, so that they get familiar with defence technology and the specialization involved in those technologies. They would then be able to provide their services or products that can be integrated into the holistic platform. The government also needs to create a new classification of A&D SMEs. This is very important because, once a special classification of a defence SME or an aerospace SME is established, that SME could be entitled to special incentives, funding packages and so on.

The government also needs to create R&D funding facilities for those SMEs involved in design and development of products that will result in significant saving of foreign exchange, because ther imported equipment are very expensive, not only to import but also to support as a part of maintenance. The Government will then have to facilitate the formation of Defence clusters along with their own self-contained common facilities centres across the country. The Government should also simplify the import and export procedures because quite a significant amount of materials, especially electronic components are imported and the procedures of import by paying duties and then claiming the duty drawbacks etc. are very cumbersome. Finally the government would do well to provide some tax incentives to encourage the participation of SMEs into the priority sectors, that is, defence and aerospace.

Making in India, for aerospace and defence

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As of 2013, aerospace and defence (A&D) offsets are reported to have generated business worth $3.5 billion. While it is true that in value-terms, most of this is accounted for by a relatively small number of SMEs, it is undeniable that a whole range of Indian SMEs now have genuine exposure to global markets and standards.

The fact that ‘build to print’ type of orders are growing for Indian SMEs shows that this segment of the A&D market has now matured to fulfill stringent global aerospace standards while remaining competitive on cost.

Given that A&D majors across the world are looking to pare costs by up to 20%, this is something that is obviously attracting the attention of many global players. Overall, although SMEs have benefited by engaging global value chains, it is now time for them to raise their capabilities to higher levels of value addition. This would enable them to penetrate deeper into the global market. As a by-product, it would also enable them to participate in a massive indigenisation push under the Make-in-India scheme.

Among today’s MSMEs, we see strong capabilities in precision CNC machining, electronics manufacturing, design of mechatronics, industrial product design, hydraulic valves and actuators, CNC sheet metal fabrication and forming, precision plastic moulding including design of moulds, software development, etc., not to mention the specialised advanced skills possessed by MSMEs already integrated into the supply chains of A&D establishments. The few Indian MSMEs doing business with global A&D companies are already certified AS9100 and are able to meet global quality and delivery standards. Indian firms in the automotive sector have established a solid international reputation for a while now. Some SMEs in India have already achieved noteworthy quality stamps by using practices like 5S, TQM, and JIT through their concurrent involvement in the automotive components industry.

The success of such SMEs has greatly improved the overall image of Indian SMEs. This has prompted global companies to look for outsourcing to India, with the obvious advantage of lower costs.

Now, the need is to elevate such SMEs to the A&D sector through orientation and exposure to the specialised stringent quality, procedures and standards. There are quite a few success stories involving SMEs in the A&D sector. One SME has indigenously designed and developed weapons control equipment for the Jaguar fighters of the IAF and many ground test jigs that would otherwise have been imported. A few other items indigenously developed by SMEs are Flight Data Recorder for fighter aircraft, precision hydraulic servo valves, multi-function displays (MFD), that form part of sophisticated aircraft systems, wire harnesses, etc. In spite of these achievements, SMEs are understood to be meeting only 20% of the indigenous content in our defence equipment. This points to either their under-utilisation or that the lead integrator, be it a DPSU or a large private-sector enterprise, withholds all the high value-addition to itself.

Tweet this: “The Make-in-India campaign adds a new dimension to the indigenisation programmes in the Indian A&D sector and increases the relevance of the SMEs manifold”.

This opens up opportunities for SMEs to learn from global experience and applying their new-found skills in the massive opportunity for indigenisation. The strong competencies across a wide spectrum of SMEs need to be leveraged via clusters for the A&D sector. In the past decade, the odd aerospace SEZ may have been formed in one or two locations. However, these do not comprise a group of industries with domain expertise across the entire spectrum of domains required for complete design and manufacture, either of the platform or its systems. Thus, the need is to move up the value chain from one-dimensional SEZ specialising in machined and fabricated parts, to the creation of multiple holistic A&D clusters encompassing all domains, across structures and systems that include avionics, hydraulics, pneumatic and electrical domains.

These are yet to be formed. It may come as a rude shock to many that a wide variety of screws, nuts, bolts, rivets, etc. are imported from abroad even to this day, although hundreds of SMEs have the capability to meet this requirement. This fact points to a lack of holistic approach to indigenisation and self-reliance.

However, even as SMEs have come a long way from being ‘garage’ operations they need serious government support in terms of priority lending dovetailed to mitigating the risks associated with design, engineering and R&D efforts. Innovation and design capabilities, though crucial to stay in the game in the aerospace sector, might entail large expenses, relative to the size of SMEs. Timely availability of capital on favourable terms will make future SME growth prospects much brighter.

Further, there has to be greater integration of SMEs with domestic OEMs in the A&D space. This would greatly strengthen the delivery capabilities and market reach of A&D SMEs in India. Currently, two SME exchanges are being set up to facilitate easier access to capital and an ‘India Opportunities Venture Fund’ worth Rs 5, 000 crore is being created through the Small Industries Development Bank of India. While these are necessary steps in the right direction, more needs to be done if the Make-in-India push has to deliver a globally competitive Indian A&D sector.

The Original Article appeared on Financial Express

Tie up with Indian SMEs with proven track record at Aero India 2015

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The Indian Aerospace and defense manufacturing sector is at the cusp of change today, with the entry of large private players and strategic alliances, mergers and buy-outs being the order of the day. Aerospace giants like Airbus, United Technologies Corporation, Lockheed Martin and Dassault Aviation have been closely looking at the Indian market and companies they can partner with. As these companies look to build an ecosystem of Indian firms whom they can outsource their global work at competitive rates and through whom they can cater to the domestic market when orders from the Indian Armed Forces materialise, they can no longer afford to depend on the monopoly public sector giants or a few large players.

In fact, it is in the interest of these global corporations to recognise early that these form the tip of the iceberg and hundreds of Small and Medium Enterprises in India support public sector organisations like HAL and contribute significantly to India’s Aerospace and Defense manufacturing sector.

With the increase in the FDI limit to 49%, global leaders in A&D manufacturing are now eager, more than ever before, to add Indian suppliers to their global supply chain. This would definitely benefit them as they are likely to find some robust partners in small and medium sized Indian enterprises that have executed indigenous projects and have proven expertise, spanning many years.

Digging a little deeper will unearth a few such hidden gems, correcting the misconception that SMEs operate at the lower end of the value chain. There are a few Indian SMEs who are not just component manufacturers but are seen adding value at multiple stages including design, development and high value manufacturing in the aerospace sector. In addition, several Indian SMEs now have the strong technological base to meet global demands and standards, an international business outlook, a competitive spirit and a willingness to restructure which makes them a perfect partner to look out for.

Large domestic players are also broadening and strengthening their competencies and resource base through the process of acquisitions and mergers. They are also looking to forge partnerships with key suppliers in the 2^nd tier. The Make in India campaign has undoubtedly added impetus to their growth aspirations. It is important that SMEs take stock of this paradigm shift and gear up to leverage the opportunity.

Seven essentials to look out for in an Indian SME partner:

Proven track record in the Aerospace domain.
Capability to design and fabricate jigs and fixtures required for production and testing.
Evidence of a strong and robust quality assurance culture built into the organization.
An organizational culture that encourages learning and training of its employees and managers.
Passion and sincerity of purpose among its main promoters in the field of A&D.
Adherence to committed delivery schedules.
Professionalism and high ethical standards in their communication and operations.

To truly leverage the combined potential of a liberal offset policy, India’s advantage in skilled manpower, and relatively low cost manufacturing, it is essential to integrate SMEs into the ecosystem. Aero India 2015 could just be the right opportunity for the industry to move in this direction.

Indian Aerospace SMEs ready to match Global Quality Standards

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This is the most appropriate time for our prime minister’s campaign of Make In India. We need to manufacture not only our own consumer durables and industrial products, but also the products required for the Aerospace & Defence sector. In fact it’s more appropriate for Make In India to be applied to the Aerospace and Defence since it involves the security of our nation and the self-reliance of our nation to defend and use our own equipment. We have been talking about self-reliance for more than five decades now.

But it’s unfortunate that we have not been able to extend the indigenous content of our arms and equipment including aircraft and battle tanks beyond 60%. It’s therefore high time that we all put our heads together. There is no dearth of talent, there is no dearth of knowledge, there is no dearth of man power, in fact India boasts of the largest engineering manpower talent and our engineering manpower is catering to the needs of global companies for application of their ideas and capabilities in products that are developed abroad. So why not we do it for ourselves? It’s therefore essential that the Indian SMEs are integrated into this whole plan of action.

“The Indian SMEs had proven themselves beyond any doubts by their contributions in the automotive sector and we have now reached a stage where Indian automobiles and their parts are exported globally”

So why can’t we do this for the Aerospace sector too? The Indian SMEs have their own core competence in their domains such as hydraulics, pneumatics, mechanical machining, fabrication, electronics, etc.

So it’s only a small quantum jump that they need to take to integrate themselves into the Aerospace & Defense sector and provide the most reliable, most cost effective and made in India products for not only the Indian market, but also export them abroad.