From pioneering India’s first television sets to becoming a key player in AI, defence electronics, traffic management, and R&D-led innovation, KELTRON’s journey reflects a deep alignment with the Make in India mission. The organisation’s focus on strategic public-private partnerships, skill development, and global outreach marks its continued evolution in the electronics and IT space. Vice Admiral Sreekumar Nair (Retd.), Managing Director of Kerala State Electronics Development Corporation Ltd (KELTRON), highlights these insights in an exclusive interaction with Krishna Mishra of Elets News Network (ENN).

Edited excerpts:

How has KELTRON evolved as a leader in India’s electronics and IT industry, and what strategies are in place to align it with the Make in India initiative?

KELTRON has continuously evolved by upgrading its technological capabilities. As you know, we started as a TV manufacturing company, the first in India to produce both black and white and colour TVs. We then moved into the telecom sector, manufacturing C-DOT exchanges in the country. Today, if you look at our portfolio, we’re involved in IT and IT-enabled services, including AI.

We’ve grown significantly in AI, particularly in traffic management and traffic solutions, which is a key focus area. Beyond just management, a major aspect today is traffic enforcement, and that’s a business growing substantially across India.

We’re participating in major tenders in this area and have strong technological tie-ups in enforcement, adaptive traffic, and intelligent traffic management systems. We also have a significant focus on defence, space, and power electronics. With the Make in India initiative, which has been in place for some time now, we see enormous growth in the defence sector as well as in space and power electronics, especially with space progressively opening up for industry partnerships. We believe there’s huge scope there, so we’re focusing heavily on these segments. Control and instrumentation is another area of focus. We feel our people are our greatest strength; our human resources are a great asset.

So, from black and white television to Gen AI in today’s context—that’s certainly been a long journey. How is KELTRON strengthening its R&D capabilities to keep pace with the times, and particularly, how is it planning to compete in the global market?

That’s a very interesting and important question. You’re aware that the present C-DAC building within our campus started as ER&DC (Electronic Research and Development Centre), which was originally part of KELTRON before it later became C-DAC.

Today, over the last few years, we’ve set up a similar ER&DC, an Electronic Research and Development Centre, located in our KELTRON Equipment Complex. They are extensively focused on research in various fields, such as solar pump controllers, certain medical electronic systems, control and instrumentation, and specific defence requirements. We also have with us Dr. S. Vijayan Pillai, Technical Director and former Director of NPOL, a distinguished scientist who is leading our research in Underwater Electronic Systems. So, that’s one part—in-house R&D.

Secondly, you can’t have everything in-house. So, what do we do? We tie up with Defence Research and Development Laboratories, like NPOL (Naval Physical Oceanographical Laboratory) at Kochi. We have a long-standing relationship with them.

Whatever they research and develop, we try to become their industry partner. Similarly, as I mentioned about C-DAC, they conduct a lot of R&D in areas like traffic and defence.

So, we partner with them as well and become their industry partners. These are some of the methods by which we ensure we do certain R&D in-house and also associate with various pioneering R&D labs in the country to ensure our products are up-to-date and that we can expand our customer base.

Could you please shed some light on the training and development programs at KELTRON? How do you ensure that KELTRON’s workforce is in tune with the latest technological requirements, particularly with reference to AI, IoT, etc., in training and development?

Apart from project implementation and our own manufacturing, KELTRON also has a wing called the KELTRON Knowledge Services Group (KSG). This group actually trains or upskills about 15,000 students annually across Kerala.

We have around 35 of our own centers and another 65 centers through channel partners across Kerala. They focus on the latest technologies like AR, VR, IoT, AI, machine learning, and logistics management. So, our Knowledge Services Group offers a wide repertoire of courses. We are also now partnering with colleges to upskill and are trying to expand this upskilling outside Kerala. With wide array of courses, we ensure that our own people also complete short-term courses at KSG or external providers. We are open to sending them for short courses outside, etc., so that our workforce—as I said in the beginning, our human resources are our greatest strength—possesses adequate skills too in this manner.

You mentioned your strategic partnerships with institutions like C-DAC and the Naval Physical Oceanographical Laboratory. Do you have any plans for such strategic collaborations with private industry as well? If so, how are these partnerships, including with government organisations, enhancing your innovation capabilities?

The way forward is always a collaborative approach. We realised this much in advance, and it’s not just with premier R&D labs in the country.

We have strategic tie-ups with Bharat Electronics Limited. For example, Bharat Electronics Limited manufactures underwater systems for defence forces or the Indian Navy, and we supply many components to them, such as sensors and power amplifiers. Similarly, we have a tie-up with Bharat Dynamics Limited, who manufacture torpedo systems; we supply them with homing heads and homing systems. It is very important that we collaborate with defence PSUs or electronics PSUs.

For instance, we supply all the rectifiers and high-end UPS systems to NPCIL (Nuclear Power Corporation of India Limited), establishing a a very important strategic partnership.  We have recently formed partnerships with Larsen & Toubro, Tatas, and Mahindra Defence Systems. We have already entered into MOUs with these firms.

L&T, Mahindra, and Tatas are entering the defence sector in a big way, so that’s an area we’re focusing on, and we’ve entered into partnerships with them. These are big private players. However, we also need to collaborate with private startups.

We collaborate extensively with startups. How do we do this? Startups are eligible to bid for and win Innovation for Defence Excellence Challenges. They are the only ones who can bid for it.

Whenever they win such prestigious projects, especially in the underwater domain, we collaborate with them to be their manufacturing partner. So, we currently have three projects running with private startups where we become their production partner to realise the product. We focus not only on the major PSUs, the government sector, and big private sector, but also on startups.

In the context of the rapidly changing technological landscape and in alignment with the Government of India’s Make in India Mission, what are the key challenges you foresee with the advent of new technologies, and what opportunities lie ahead for KELTRON as an institution?

We see it only as an opportunity because, while there might be some resistance to every change, we should look at it as an opportunity to seize so that we can move forward.

I’ll give you an example. Today, you see the toll booths in India. They are all manual, where the RFID is read, and you have to stop your vehicle at the toll gate; then the gate has to open for you to proceed.

Imagine the amount of time vehicles lose, the additional fuel consumed, and the backlog of vehicles. There’s a lot of congestion. The purpose of expressways is to avoid this. So, the new technology should enable seamless traffic.

Even if the speed is 100-120 kilometers an hour, you should be able to pay the toll without stopping. We are working in this field and have even conducted a pilot study in Kerala. We are confident that NHAI is coming up with major tenders for what’s called multi-lane free flow traffic systems. This system would automatically detect the number plate using automatic number plate recognition cameras, radars, and lidars, and then charge the vehicle through RFID for the distance traveled.

We continuously innovate ourselves. That’s one example I gave. Another example could be how we supply many systems to the Indian Navy. In fact, every naval ship built includes three of our systems: the speed measuring device called a log, the depth measuring device called an echo sounder, and the underwater communication system.

To be competitive and technologically advanced in the market, we must incorporate the latest technologies in these systems and offer the best. So, we continuously conduct research in this area, upgrading ourselves to keep our customer base intact.

These are some of the methods we use. I gave two examples, but we innovate in every field like this.

Any global expansion plans as well?

We would love to, and we’ve made a humble beginning. For example, you might have seen in the papers that as part of the Invest Kerala Global Summit, which happened in February in Kochi, we were able to tie up with few international firms. We’ve already received a small order for the Vietnam Navy and are supplying 350 transducers to them. That’s currently in the manufacturing stage. We’re also looking at our traffic signals and traffic solutions outside India.

We have submitted a proposal to the Mauritius port, and we are hopeful that should materialize in the next few months. We are looking at every opportunity to expand our business globally. Let’s hope we succeed.

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