Rolta which is one among the leading suppliers of a host of products—from sensors to shooters—to the Indian Army, is now looking ahead to bagging the Indian Army’s tactical communications systems, battlefield management systems (BMS) and the future infantry soldier as a system (F-INSAS) deals. The company has already tied up with Selex Communications for tactical communication system and is looking for international partners for the other two programmes.

Speaking to SP’s M.A.I. during Defexpo, Atul D. Tayal, Joint Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer, Domestic Operations, Rolta, said that the “Make Indian’ concept would give Rolta an edge over the others in getting the orders. Defexpo is a good platform which enables us to showcase our range of products before the decision-makers.

While the company has trade relationship with other countries for its engineering and enhanced IT capabilities, the company’s defence sector relationship is restricted to India only. “We have business in Middle East, Europe and many other countries on our engineering capabilities but our defence and security sector relationship is only in India,” said Tayal. Besides the BMS, F-INSAS and tactical communications system, Rolta is also looking at Indian Army’s command and control (C2) systems, intelligence surveillance and reconnaissance (ISR) programmes.

The company which started three decades back as a data processing company eventually went into ‘mapping’ and tied up with the Survey of India. “We started with military mapping for the Indian Army and expanded with times.” Apart from the Indian Army, the company is working with the Indian Air Force (software and digital display for heads-up display), Indian Navy (hydrographic mapping), homeland security agencies and is also into nuclear engineering, space, business intelligence, etc. Besides working with agencies under the Ministry of Home Affairs, it has tie-ups with many state police forces too. “We started with the Mumbai Police seven years back and today we are working with many state police forces,” said Tayal.