India attracting more and more technologists, expert

Singapore, Feb 26: India is more attractive than the other emerging markets for international technology groups, given the huge growth potential of domestic demand, a senior security industry official said today.

"Today, India is the most suitable market to adopt technologies in every sphere of the economy including defence sector," said Richard Wileman, director of business development in international markets at UTC Aerospace Systems, a leading global corporation.

Noting India has opened foreign investment in the defence industry, Wileman said there was much more the Indian government can gain by adopting technologies, which eventually can be manufactured in whole or in parts in the country.

"The 'Make in India' is an attractive initiative and allowing Foreign Direct Investment in the defence sector would bring more gains to the Indian economy," Wileman told PTI.

UTC has a big presence in India and employs over 6,000 staff across 80 locations and invested USD5 billion in 2014. Among UTC's most recent products on offer to India is the DB110 Airborne Reconnaissance Systems and the SCi-toolset for simplifying complex information for still and video imagery, along with other non-imagery information data sets.

"Among our contributions to the Indian market, we have a wide range of "exclusive" products such as our market leading day/night high resolution camera, the DB110, and our Information Situational Awareness and Analysis Tools (called SCi, Simplifying Complex Information) which together would greatly benefit the country's defence sector," said Wileman, a defence specialist.

Elaborating, he said the Indian market has the capacity to adopt technologies for long-term benefits. "Technologists will soon be designing India specific high-end products, given the huge growth potential of domestic demand," he pointed out, emphasizing on India's highly rated engineering pool in the information technology sector.

"Comparatively, emerging markets are either too small in capacity to command such attention of the technologists," he added.

PTI