Dema to mobilise corpus fund for R&D in defence

Dema Manufacturing Association (formerly Defence Electronics Manufacturing Association) - a group of small and medium enterprises engaged in manufacturing for defence establishments has planned a corpus fund to facilitate defence related research and development.

DS Kamalapurkar, president, Dema said the fund will encourage small firms to take up R&D projects for defence products.

"Dema has so far gathered about Rs 5 crore from its members and some patrons in India and abroad, though the requirement is in the range of Rs 50 crore.

"The idea is to develop in India products that are currently being imported at a very high cost. After development and approval, the licensing for manufacture would be done," Kamlapurkar said.

He informed that during the last five years the Dema member companies "consortium" had developed four products including high-frequency trans-receivers for guided missile, stabilised target tracking platforms, explosives decompression and recompression chambers for training of fighter pilots and unmanned arial vehicle for surveillance.

The 40-member strong Dema has also planned a centralised reliability, product proving and field trial facility for speeding up development and manufacturing process.

Kamlapurkar said the association is ready with the basic infrastructure for this, but it is scattered and needs to be centralised and expanded.

The initial investment for setting up the facility will be Rs 6 crore in addition to the land cost, he said, adding that the association has approached the ministry of defence for allotment of land at the campus of the Defence Research and Development Organisation.

The combined turnover of Dema member units is Rs 320 crore, of which Rs 25 crore comes from business done with the ministry of defence, Kamalapurkar informed. The association intends increasing this to Rs 70 crore in the next three years, he said.

"The investments required for production of these items is not so big and the total business they generate is small too. Therefore small industries, run by technocrats, hold a strong promise in this area," he said.