Rajnath opens BEL's innovation centre in Bengaluru

Bharat Electronics Ltd has opened its product development and innovation centre in Bengaluru on Thursday with an investment of Rs 220 crore.

Bengaluru: Defence Minister Rajnath Singh on Thursday unveiled the product development and innovation centre of the state-run Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL) in this tech hub.

"As the government is committed to reaching Digital India connectivity to remote areas across the country, Singh said the development of new technologies in defence will help save foreign exchange, which can be utilized for other development activities to improve the quality of their life," said Singh on the occasion.

Set up at a cost of Rs 220 crore, the centre has a world-class research and development facility.

"The Centre will contribute to the 'Make in India' initiative through indigenization efforts aimed at self-reliance," noted Singh.

"The centre is equipped with facilities and resources to design, develop, prototype and generate manufacturing documents for systems and sub-systems, which can be marketed as products or used in the development of larger systems or system-of-systems by our business units," said the defence behemoth.

Defence Department Secretary and state-run Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) chairman G. Satheesh Reddy, BEL Chairman M.V. Gowtama and INAE president Sanka Mishra participated in the inaugural event of the three-day conclave.

Singh also flagged off the 7th edition of Engineers Conclave (EC 2019) at the defence behemoth's academy for excellence in the city's northern suburb.

The annual conclave is aimed at bringing engineers from across the country to identify, discuss and deliberate issues of national importance and arrive at solutions with engineering interventions.

"Recommendations from the conclave are carried by the Indian National Academic of Engineering (INAE) with the government departments or agencies," the state-run enterprise said in a statement here later.

The annual conclave is based on two themes: 'Defence Technology & Innovation' and 'Transformation of Rural India Using Digital Technologies'.

In a related development, the Defence Minister also unveiled the high power transmitter for the new generation missile Akash-NG RF (radio frequency), designed by Microwave Tue Research & Development centre, a DRDO lab.

"The travelling-wave tube-based transmitter along with other electronics is a 'Make-in-India' product and a success story for concurrent engineering," added the statement.