Opinion: The Gap Between What The Military Needs And What Defence Start-ups Build

The war in Ukraine shows what can happen when users and makers stay in touch every day

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Ask the founder of an Indian defence start-up where they learnt about the Army’s needs, and the answer is usually a problem statement. It will say what the Army wants a system to do. It usually won’t say that the jawan carrying it at 15,000 feet is already loaded down, or that it may sit for weeks at a forward post before a fitter gets to look at it.

Any officer who has served there knows this. Little of it reaches a start-up’s desk. A drone tuned on a range near Bengaluru can lose lift and battery life in eastern Ladakh, and electronics that cope with Rajasthan’s dust can corrode aboard a ship. Founders without a service background often find this out at user trials, after the money has gone.

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Why the distance exists

The services do not keep start-ups at arm’s length by accident. Procurement rules require that all bidders get the same information. If an officer spends months helping one firm improve its product, the other bidders can fairly ask whether the contest was even. Requirements for the Line of Actual Control (LAC) are sensitive, and the Army cannot freely disclose sensitive operational requirements. User trials also have to test every product against the same qualitative requirements. That becomes difficult when each firm has built its design around feedback from a different unit. And........

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