Airbus signs aircraft services MoU with Adani Defence and Aerospace

Airbus India and Adani Defence & Aerospace on Thursday signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to leverage synergies in aerospace and civil aviation sector. The fast-growing sector is estimated to generate annual business worth USD 6.3 billion in the country by 2025.

The Mou was signed by Anand Stanley, President and MD, Airbus India & South Asia, and Ashish Rajvanshi, Head of Adani Defence & Aerospace. It was signed at the 11th edition of the DefExpo 2020, a flagship biennial event of the Ministry of Defence held in Lucknow.

Airbus and Adani will explore opportunities for collaboration in the area of aircraft services for Indian and South Asian market. Airbus' global services forecast envisages the Indian aircraft services market to grow to USD 6.3 billion by 2025.

"Airbus is the world's leading civil aviation company as well as a major innovator and provider of aircraft services. This MoU demonstrates our commitment to support the development of India as a world-class services hub for aerospace products," said Anand Stanley.

Adani Defence & Aerospace has established a comprehensive aerospace and defence ecosystem in India. With Adani's recent foray into airports, this potential collaboration will leverage the synergies between the product and services excellence of Airbus and infrastructure, engineering and mega project execution capabilities of Adani, the Airbus said.

"India is at the cusp of transformational growth in the aircraft services market. Our collaboration with Airbus is aligned to our vision of nation-building and indigenise critical technologies and services thus creating a vibrant ecosystem in aerospace capabilities in India," said Ashish Rajvanshi.

The Airbus showcased its best-in-class military products and cutting-edge defence technologies at the expo. Models of the highly-versatile C295 aircraft, as well as the H145M and the H225M helicopters, were among its top exhibits.

DefExpo 2020

Earlier, Prime Minister Narendra Modi while inaugurating the DefExpo this week said his government has set a defence export target of 5 billion dollars in the next five years. Mr Modi said, in 2014, the export of defence equipment from India was about Rs2,000 crore. In the last 2 years, it has gone up to Rs17,000 crore. In the next five years, our target is export of 5 billion US dollars, which is about Rs35,000 crore. Mr Modi said, our mantra is Make in India, for India, for the world.

The eleventh edition of the mega defence event is being held in Lucknow with the theme "India: The Emerging Defence Manufacturing Hub". The five-day DefExpo - India's biennial exhibition of military platforms and weapons - is being attended by 38 defence ministers and top executives of 172 foreign defence majors and 856 Indian companies.