252: Secrets Behind Building Planes in India – What You Didn't Know | Venkatesh Mudragalla(Jeh Aerospace)

[00:00:00] This Is As Critical And As Complex As It Gets Right I Mean You Are At The End Of The Day Making Somethings Which Is Actually Carrying Humans In The Air I Mean It Is As Complex And As Safety Critical As Anything That We Do In The World What Do You Think Happened At Boeing Then In That Case Right Seems Again Like A Horror Show Should We Be worried?

[00:00:27] See The Mantra Is Very Simple How Do We Deliver Conforming Parts Consistently On Time As Long As We Are Able To Do That We Have A Winner Here Venkatesh MudragallaJeh Aerospace, A Company Pushing The Boundaries Of Indigenous Aerospace Innovation With A Deep Focus On Advanced Manufacturing And Precision Engineering, He Is Driving Technological Breakthroughs That Put India On The Global Aerospace Map

[00:00:54] Hello Everyone Welcome To The Startup Operator Podcast I Am Roshan Karyapa And My Guest Today Is Venkatesh MudragallaJeh Aerospace Venkatesh MudragallaJah

[00:01:16] Venki Started This Venture With Vishal Another Friend And Colleague Of His In Tata Venkate And Vishal Spent About A Decade Or So Leading The Indian Aerospace Industry They Are Very Very Accomplished Professionals Venkate Got Promoted About 7 Times In 10 Years Vishal Was One Of The Youngest CXOs In The Tata Group As Well And They Quit All Of This To Startup In 2022

[00:01:44] So There Is A Lot That One Can Talk About In The Aerospace Industry Itself It Is So Damn Complicated So I Explore All Of It Right I Mean The Supply Chain Constraints What Goes Into The Product And Engineering Aspects How Does Someone Really Make Money In This Industry What Is A Value Chain Like And You Know What It Will Take From A Policy From An Ecosystem Perspective To Sort Of Have Our Own Airbus Or Boeing Maybe 10 Or 15 Years Down The Line

[00:02:13] This Was A Fascinating Overview Of An Industry That Is Super Important For Us I Mean If We Were To Think Of A Vixit Bharat As Such So Yeah I Had Fun Talking About It In Fact I Mean This Is Perhaps The Most Number Of Questions I Have Asked On A Podcast And I Hope You Guys Enjoy This If You Do Don't Forget To Share And Subscribe All Right With That Out Of The Way Let's Dive In To This Episode With Venkatesh Mudragilla Co-Founder Of J Airspace Hey Venkatesh Mudragilla Co-Founders

[00:02:42] Hey Venkate Welcome To The Startup Operator Podcast Thank You So Much For Making The Time Hi Roshan Good To Be Here Thank You Yeah I Know We've Gone Back And Forth With Your Team A Few Different Times But It's Great To Have You Here Finally And Like I Was Telling You Before We Started Recording We Are Trying To Focus On Deep Tech And Manufacturing Move Away From Some Of The SaaS Consumer Fintech Folks Right Not Trying To Throw Any Shade Or Anything We Absolutely Love Those Startups And Founders As Well But I Think We've Done Too Much Of

[00:03:11] And We Now Want To Focus On Cutting Metal Right So Which Is Why We've Had You Know Ethereal Before We've Had Triple S We've Had S We've Had Signler And So On So Jay Is Added To That List As Well So Yeah Yeah Thank You So Happy To Be Here For Being Here Yeah Awesome So You Know The Aerospace Industry Right I Mean It's Perhaps The Most Complicated Space I Can Think Of Right And I Think If You See What's Happened Over The Last Five Or Ten Years Just From A

[00:03:40] Layperson Perspective I Think There's So Many Shocks That This Industry Has Gotten Right I Mean Whether It Is The 737 Crash That Happened Yeah Right And Then Of Course COVID Yeah And Then Everything That You're Seeing With What's Happening In The US Right With Air Traffic Controllers And You Know How That Intersects With BEI And Then Labor Shortage And

[00:04:01] Everything Yeah It's A Space And Evolution At This Part Of Time And It Feels Like An Inflection Point I Mean Do You Feel The Same No No I Think Absolutely You Hit The Nail Right On The Head In The In Fact If I Were To Give You A Little Bit Of Context From Our Side A Erospace Industry Has Come From Two Back To Back To Back To Back To Back To Back Back Spawn Events Right The First One We Had A Crash Of 737 MAX Aircraft At The Point Of Time That

[00:04:27] Aircraft Used To Be The Largest Selling Aircraft In The World Yeah And When All Of Us Thought Nothing Worse Could Happen That's When The COVID Hit If You See Along With The Hospitality Industry This Industry Has Been A Very Severely Affected Industry So Industry Has Never Been Able To Come Back From These Two Shocks That Is Going So Supply Chain Is Also Under Severe Turbulence Right One More Thing That Happened Is Of Course There's A Serious Demand Down That We Have Seen Ramp Down Post Pandemic Right Because The Travel Has Dropped

[00:04:53] However When Pandemic Went Away Travel Has Come Back With Vengeance There's A V-Ship Recovery In The Demand But As You Would Imagine It's Relatively Easier To Ramp Down But Far More Difficult To Ramp Up Correct So Industry Continues To Be In A Supply Chain Turbulence And Now That Is Something New In This Particular Industry Ocean This Industry Was Always Supply Chain Constraint Because Today If You Look At The

[00:05:16] If You Look At The Likes Of The OEMs Like The Boeings Of The Airbus Of The World More Than 70% Of The Value Add That Happens In An Aircraft Is Actually Done By The Tears Of These OEMs And Not By Themselves They Do Very Limited Amount Of Value Add Internally So Which Makes Them Very Very Dependent On Supply Chain And Events Like These Happen Hitting Some Of The Best Platforms In The World Then The Entire Supply Chain Turbulence Which Has Started Seriously Affecting The OEMs And Then Of Course The Deliveries To The End Customers As Well

[00:05:44] Right Yeah I Mean I Often Think Of This Milton Friedman Clip Right Where He's Explaining Capitalism And He Just You Know Shows A Pencil And He Says You Know This One Pencil Right Has Graphite Coming From Somewhere Else Has Lead Coming From Somewhere Else Wood From Somewhere Else Paint From Somewhere Else And So On And So For Right Right And Just To Illustrate The Efficiency Of Capital Markets And What Not

[00:06:06] I Mean I Can't Even Begin To Think How Complex The Aerospace Industry Is Right With As Many Dependencies And Such A Complex Supply Chain I Mean You Know I Shouldn't Say This But It's A Surprise That There's Only One Crash Every Few Years Or So Right God Forbid It Become Like A Recurring Thing Right But When Such A Thing Happens You Know I Mean

[00:06:33] What Goes Through Your Mind And What Goes Through Your Mind Because You Guys Are In The Industry Right So What What Do You Guys Think About No I Think Roshan As You Said This Is As Critical And As Complex As It Gets Right And You Are At The End Of The Day Making Something Which Is Actually Carrying Humans In The Air And It Is As Complex And As Safety Critical As Anything That We Do In The World And Like You Rightly Said Of Course There Are Thousands Of Parts That Come From Different Different Places They All Come Together To Make Something Like An Air

[00:07:02] Just To Illustrate With Some If You Were To Look At A If You Were To Look At A Single A Aircraft Like An A320 It Has Close To 300,000 Unique Parts If You Were To Talk About Something As Big As An A380 It Can Have Parts Up To A Million SQs Wow Crazy So That's A Lot Of Part Numbers Made In Different Different Factories Across The World And They All Coming Together And Made Into This Aircraft That Flies All Of It's Complex Thing Right Again What Drives A

[00:07:32] This Particle Industry Is It's Consciousness Towards The Safety And The Quality Of The Product That's Paramount For Everybody That Who Is In This Particular Industry And That's What Actually Determines The Success Of Everybody Who Is Part Of This Part Of This Particular Industry Right So I Think Nothing More Important And So The Processes Are Extremely Stringent Right Both At Manufacturing Level At An OEM Integration Level And Of The Certification Level By The Authorities Whether It's FSA Or DGCA The Process In The Control

[00:08:02] Are Extremely Stringent Right Of Course To Ensure The Safety Of You And I When We Travel On The Aircraft What Do You Think Happened At Boeing Then In That Case Right I Mean Like With The Door Flying Off And I Mean Didn't Really Fly Off But It Opened Midair And Stuff Right I Mean Seems Again Like A Horror Show Right Especially For An Industry Which Emphasizes Safety As You Mentioned So Much Right So Should We Be Worried No I Think See Boeing Is One Of The Best Engineering Companies That Ever Existed Right

[00:08:32] I Think The Capability And The Technology That Is At Par With Anything Is That We Do In The World Right Top Notch I Think Boeing Is Taking Enough Actions To Make All Of Us Feel Comfortable With The Actions That They Are Taking The Issue That We Have Seen Of Course Is Something That Should Have Never Happened But It Is An Issue That Caused Somewhere In The Supply Chain And Of Course Today Boeing Is Initiative To Acquire That Particular Entity And Bring It Back To The Fold So That They Ensure That The Process Are More Stringent And Quality

[00:09:02] Is Kept At The Way How It Is One Of The Critical Aspects That Is One Of The Critical Aspects That Boeing Is Doing To Ensure The Safety For All Of Us Right So You Mentioned The Demand Supply Gap Right I Mean Especially Post-Covid We Have Seen Like Rising Travel And Which Means That People Want More Aircrafts And Suppliers Whether It's Boeing Or Airbus Or Whoever Else Is Kind Of Struggling To Keep Up With That Demand Yeah Right So How Is The Industry Looking To Bridge This I Mean What Seems To Be The Solution

[00:09:29] No I Think Roshan If You See Like I Told Before This Industry Has Always Been A Supply Constrained Industry However Because Of The Problems That We Spoke Of A Little While Ago This Problem Has Been Accentuated Now And Has Completely Pushed The Supply Chain Into Turbulence And Like We Spoke Before The OEMs Are Also Heavily Dependent On The Supply Chain So What Is The Need Of Supply Chain Resiliency Today While This Industry Has Many Suppliers But Still Supply Chain Is Very Fractant

[00:09:59] Fragmented How Do We Continue To Make It How Do We Continue To Make It Distributed But More Focused And Also Use Some Of The Capabilities And Capacities That Are There In Emerging Economics Like The Countries Like India Will Help To Bridge This Gap Better If You Also Look At Any Speech Or Any Announcements Made By The OEMs Because Of Delays In They Attribute The Problem To The Supply Chain Right Some Of The Air Engine Manufacturers Are Also Struggling For Capacities And Capabilities That Are There

[00:10:28] Another Thing That Are Another Thing That Is Happening Is Unlike Any Other Industry And The Erosion This Particular Industry Even Today Most Of The Manufacturing Happens Actually In Actually In Western Economies Which Is US And Western Europe Which Is Very Different If You Look At Any Industries Like Electronics Industrial So Some Of The So There Is Also Today In

[00:10:48] So There Is Also Today Increasing Gravitas To Move Some Of This Work To The Emerging Economies To Make It More Balanced Or Else Some Of The Problems That You Are Experiencing In These Countries Have Become The Problems Of Aerospace Industry Like Severe Labour Attrition So Some Of The Function In The

[00:11:05] So Some Of The Problems Of The Problems Of The Problems Of The Existing Markets Is Also Causing Trouble In This Particular Industry So Some Of The Initiatives Like Moving Some Of This Work To Countries Like India Is Also Helping Bridge This Gap But Again We Are Long Way From Where We Need To Be To Completely Solve This Problem

[00:11:23] Most Of The Demand Is Also Coming From The

[00:11:52] However In Terms Of The However In Terms Of Industry We Are We Are Almost At 19th Or 20th There Is A Huge Gap Between The Market And The Supply That You See Here Right So However What Is Happening Is There Is Now Natural Gravitas The Market Is Moving Towards India So Is The Industry Today If You See Some Of The Major OEMs Like The Boeings And The Airbus Of The World Have Significantly Increased Their Spend In The Country And That We Have Seen In The Last Five Years Significantly Rising And Even If You Look At Some Of The

[00:12:22] Of The Announcements That Were Made In Aero India A Couple Of Days Ago That Is Showing The Progress That Is Happening Towards Moving Manufacturing Into India Right So I Think This Is Useful Context And Background For Us To Tell Deeper Into Jair AeroSpace Could You Share The Origin Story I Mean I Understand You And Vishal The Co-Founders Were In Tata Earlier Right And Sort Of Helped Unlock This India Potential For The Likes Of Boeing Lockheed And So On Yeah And Saw Opportunity

[00:12:52] To Sort Of Do Something To Sort Of Do Something Yourself Right I Mean Yes Yeah If You Could Just Talk About How Everything Came Together Sure No I Think Vishal And I Have Been Both Fortunates And Lucky To Be Part Of India's Aerospace Growth Story In The Last Decade And A Half Like You Said We Have Been Part Of The Tata Groups Aerospace And Defense Arm Where We Had Opportunity To Work With All The Global OEMs And Leadership Roles We Have Done Some Good Work At Global Scale Like I Mentioned Before Roshan We Have Unlocked This

[00:13:22] Potential Of India To A Lot Of Large OEMs And To A Lot Of Large OEMs However Like I Mentioned Before We Have Even Today More Than 70% Of The Value Add In An Aircraft Done By The T1s And T2s Our Objective Is How Do We Unlock This India Potential To Some Of These T1s And T2s Who Have Not Come To India Who Have Not Experienced India Who Have Not Got The Benefits Of Working With So You May Not Say The Boeings And The Lockheeds Are Making Use Of The India Potential But Everyone Else Right In That Value Chain Is

[00:13:52] Not And So You Want To Focus On Those Guys And Sort Of Unlock This See The Problems That They Are Facing Are Very Very Similar To The Likes Of The Boeings Airbus And The Lockheeds Of The World Right However They Are Small In Size They Don't Have Where With All To Come And Set Up Large Offices Here In India And Largest Supply Chain Teams That Is Where We Want To Become That Bridge Who Can Help Them Unlock India Potential For Meeting The Demands Of The Global Aerospace Supply Chain

[00:14:16] Right Interesting When You Think About Aerospace Right I Mean Manufacturing In General Is Quite Capital Intensive I Mean It's Not Like You Know Writing Software Or You Know Something Like That A aerospace Is Even More Capital Intensive Right I Mean You Are Talking About Very High Precision And You Are Also Talking About Materials Which Are Of A Certain Standard Or You Know These Semi-Processed You Know Equipments And Parts That You May

[00:14:46] May Need Which Are Perhaps Have To Be Imported And So On How Do You Overcome Some Of This How Do You Start Up In Aerospace Yeah No I Think See Starting Up Anything Is Very Difficult However In An Industry Like Aerospace Which Have Very High Capital Demand It Makes It Even More Difficult And When Vishal And I Thought About Starting Something In This Particular Industry Those Were The Questions That We Were Also Rappled With Here Roshan What We Have Done We Have Taken A Two Pronged Approach To Begin With At

[00:15:16] The Geo Space What We Started What We Started Doing Was First Initially We Were In The Capacities That We Have In The Capacities That Were Available In The Supply Chain In The We Had A Huge Ecosystem That We Have Been Personally Involved In In Developing In The Last 10 Years Or So So We Have Used Some Of The Unused Capacities There And Offered Those Capacities Coupled With The Capabilities That We Bring In As A Part Of Our Team And Started Offering That To The Customers In The U.S. And Western Europe We Have Been Able To Find Some Early Success We

[00:15:42] Started Using Supply Chain To Deliver Some Components From Here To The U.S. Subsequently Then We Have Been Funded By General Catalyst One Of The Largest VCs In The World From Bay Area And Then We Have Set Up A World Class Capability Now In Hyderabad Where We Are Manufacturing Components Out Of Our Facility As Well So We Have Taken A Two Pronged Approach Initially We Were Integrating The Supply Chain In The Country And Being Capital Efficient By Doing So And Then Subsequently Then We Have Raised Our Series Series See Round Of Funding And Then Set Up Our Own Internal Capability Right

[00:16:12] You Know We Discussed That The Ecosystem The Supply Chain Itself Is Like Very Very Complex Right I Mean Tons Of Moving Parts And So On So How Do You Sort Of Optimize This And Bring This Together You Know Because I Did Say That You Know There Might Be Import Dependencies And So On Yeah And Today The World We Live In Is In You Know In Kind Of Termal Right I Mean Wars Happening And So On Yeah So How Do You Bring All Of That Together

[00:16:37] No I Think These Challenges Are Not Unheard Of In This Aerospace Industry Even Today We Heavily Depend On Western Countries For Our Raw Material Needs Currently All Of The Aluminium Nickel And Cobalt Steels Inconel Etc That Is Used In The Aerospace Manufacturing We Don't Have Approved Mills In The Country So We Continue To Import These From The Western Of Course In The Of Course In The OEMs In The OEMs

[00:17:06] Of Course In The OEMs To Come And OEMs To Come And Approve Some Of The Mills And The OEMs To Come And Approve Some Of The Mills That We Have In The Country Which Should Ease Out Some Of These Supply Chain Challenges And Make It Better For The Local Manufacturers Right Right Okay What Is The Starting Point For Someone To Like Become A Manufacturing Services Provider For Aerospace Right Because When I Think About Services Because When I Think About Services I Mean You Have To Build With The Customer At The Heart Of You Know Everything Right You Are Solving For That Person Right

[00:17:36] Whereas In Product Or Something I Mean You Take A Hypothesis That You Then Validate And Then Productize Right But Yeah Services As Well Is A Little More Tricky Because You Have To Figure Out Where You Want To Play Right I Mean What You Want To Do Specifically Yeah

[00:17:51] And If You Have One Of These You Know Larger You Know 200 300 Million Dollar Sort Of Companies Like That Want To Subcontract To You Yeah And They Paying You A Million Dollars You Will Want To Do Anything And Everything For Them Right So Right How Do You Pick Where To Play In This Sort Of A Domain No I Think Like Any Other Startup Even The Startups In Aerospace And Defense Industry Or The Players Who Want To Enter The Aerospace And Defense Industry Focus Is Extremely Important Like We Spoke Before

[00:18:20] There Are Hundreds Of Thousands Of There Are Hundreds Of Thousands Of Parts In An Aircraft Right Of Course These Are Parts But There Are Several Underlying Capabilities That You Need To Manufacture Some Of These Components Like Machining There Is Fabrication Process There Is Structural Assembly There Is Composites Manufacturing So What You Need To Do Is What You Need To Do Is What'S Your Focus Area And You Also Have To Derive The Focus Area Based On What You Are Good At And What You Can Be Good At Where You Can Build A Good Capability And A Good Team Around It That'S What You Should Choose As A Focus Area And Then

[00:18:50] Start Offering Solutions And Then Start Offering Solutions Around It Start Offering Solutions Around It That Focus Is Very Very Important If You Start Growing Horizontally As You Know It'S Very Very Important To Be It'S Very Very Important To Be Efficient And Efficient Efficient And Quality Conscious In This Particular So Focus Is Extremely Important So Choose The Right Vertical That We Need To Be Right Right Platform Maybe Choose You Want To Begin With Commercial Or Defense And Choose The Right Path There And Then The Underlying Capability And Then Within

[00:19:13] Let's Say If You Pick Up Machining As A Capability What Is The Range Of Size Of Parts That You Want To Do Is It Something Which Is Less Than 1 Meter Or You Want To Get To Log Wired Machining So That Focus Is Very Very Important On Two And Second Thing Also Is Choice Of Materials You Want To Work On Softer Materials Or Harder Materials Those Are The Things That We Need To Think Of It All Boards Where You Can Offer Best Efficiency Or You Can Offer Best Structure In Best Structure In Terms Of Cost And Best Capability That You Can Build Based On The Resources That You Have And The Teams That You Will Be Able To Put Together

[00:19:42] Right And Can You Talk About Some Of The Technical Nuances Like For A Layperson Audience Right I Mean Talk About Some Of The Complexities Involved And How You Are Overcoming Them So If You Look At The Entire Manufacturing Process Let'S Put It This Way Roshan Roshan There Is To Begin With There Is Subtractive Process Right

[00:20:02] For Example If You Are To Make Any Particular Part Of Any Shape In Subtractive Process What You Do Is You Take A Block Of Metal Or Piece Of Metal And Start Removing Material To Keep It That Particular Shape Of Course There Is Also Additive Process Where You Actually Start Depositing Material To Create That So There Are Two Major Machining Process Which Is Both Additive And Subtractive Subtractive Is The Most Used In The Common Process That'S Used In The Industry Additive Is Something Which Is Which Is Very Recently Picking Up

[00:20:58] The Weight To Strength The Weight To Strength Ratio You Are You Are Trying To Increase The Strength But Also Not Increase The Weight Drastically So Those Are Different Different Kinds Of Technology That You Can Use In Manufacturing Process Right And What Do You Do Specifically Within That We Are Very Very Focused On We Are Very Very Focused On Pecision Machining And Structural Assembly In The Machining Side We Are Focused On Subtractive Process Right Now Talent Is A Key Component To Your Delivery As Such Yeah And You Know People Think That With 10 Lack Or 12 Lack Engineers Graduating Every

[00:21:27] Year India Is Like Has A Surplus Of Engineers Yeah Right But Then I Mean When You Think About The Skill Gap It Is Huge Right And Especially For Deep Tech And Manufacturing We Don't Find CNC Machinists For Example Very Commonly Available Right I Mean It's It's A Fight For Folks To Find Those Kind Of People As Well So So How Do You Find Talent For This And How Do You Train These Folks To Upskill

[00:21:54] Yeah No I Think It's A Very Very Valid Point Talent Is The Name Of The Game Here Access To While We Have Like You Said We Have About 1.5 Million Engineers Graduating In The Country Every Year Right We Also Add About 50 Million People To Workforce Right While We Have A Lot Of This Talent That's Available In The Country However The Talent Is Still Very Raw Not Very Industry Ready Yes So There Is A Lot Of Training And Unlearning And Relearning That We Need To Do For Them To Start Contributing

[00:22:24] In A Value Adding Manner In The Industry There Are 2-3 Ways How We Can Do It And I Will Also Give You A Couple Of Examples Of What We Are Doing At Jairospace One Thing Of Course Is How Do We Partner With Academia So That Students At The Institutes Are Also Taught Subjects Which Are Relevant To The Way How Industry Is Progressing Today And Very Very Focused From A Sector Perspective As Well If Let's Say There Is Somebody Who Is Working On Building A Great Manufacturing Shop

[00:22:54] How Do You Customize A Certain Curriculum To Offer Best Machines That One Can Be Trained In The College That's Something That We Can Do With Academy On This Part We Are Also Working With A Few Institutes In The Country Wherein We Are Going In A Little Early In Terms Of Hiring Process Giving Them Access To The Curriculum That We Want Them To Be Trained And Then Helping Them Through Our Expertise Etcetera And Then We Are Trying To See Second Thing Is How Do We Keep Focusing On Level Leveling The Levels Of The Levels Of The Levels Of The

[00:23:24] So Currently At Jairospace We Are Building Our Center Of Skill Where We Do In-House Training Of All Of Our Operators And All The People Who Join Jairospace So Those Are Some Of The Initiatives That We Are Doing You Know I Mean I Think About 10 10 Years Back Or Something Right I Mean This Term Called Industry 4.0 Started Being Bandied About Yeah And Everyone Felt That You Will Have These Fully Automated You Know Manufacturing Setups And So On

[00:23:50] And Where You Will Not Require Any Humans Involved But Certainly I Mean There May Be Fewer Required Or I Don't Know About That As Well Right But You Know What Is The What Is The Current State Of Industry 4.0 As You See It Right So Now I Think If You Look At The Western Western World A Lot Of Push Is Going To Is Moving Towards Automation Because They Are Having Severe Labor Shortage

[00:24:16] Whereas In India Because We Have Access To A Lot Of Workforce We Tend To Put In People To Solve Our Problems We Believe At Jairospace Actually Either Of The Extremes Is Not Good Let Me Explain To You A Little Bit More If I Were To Talk About Automation Today Generally Some Of These Tech First Comes In The Automotive Industry And Then Gets Adopted In The Aerospace Industry A Lot Of

[00:24:39] The Time Even Some Of The World Class Automotive Manufacturers Have Not Been Able To Fully Automate Their Lines Here We Are Talking About An Industry Where There Is High Volume And Very Similar Product That Is Made In Thousands Of Quantities Whereas In Aerospace Industry Roshan Altogether Boeing And Airbus Put Together They Do About 2000 Planes In A Year It Is Very High Mix And Very Low Volume Industry Which Is Not Very Conducive For Doing A Lot Of Automation

[00:25:05] There Are Pockets Where You Can Do Excellence In Automation But It Still Needs To Be Very Efficient In In Terms Of Using The Workforce So What We Are Doing At Jairospace How Do We Combine This Talent And Technology And Bring Best Of Both The Worlds To Deliver Excellence And Efficiency To Our Customers I Will Also Share A Couple Of Examples There Like You Mentioned All The CNC Machines That We Have In Our Factory Are Industry 4.0 Enabled Which Means What We Are Doing Is Every Movement That Is Happening In Our

[00:25:35] Machine And Every Movement That Is Happening In Our Facility Is Actually Digitally Recorded We Extract The Data We Extract The Data Build A Digital Layer And Then Use For Driving Intelligent Analytics Out Of It And To Keep Improve Our Process Using That Right Interesting One Thing We Are Also Very Famous For In India Is That Our Mentality Of Jugaad Right I Mean Like You Work With Constraints And Produce Innovation Out Of That Right I Mean If You Look At Let's Say Isro Which I

[00:26:05] I Would Say I Mean It's High Tech Innovation And Not Jugaad Per Se Right I Mean To Yes We Had A Lower Budget Than Most Other Space Organizations And Institutes But Really I Mean It's Phenomenal Engineering At The Core Of It Right Right So How Do You Apply That Mindset At Jairospace Right Which Is That To Be Able To Work In A Let's Say A Relatively Smaller Setup With More Constraints And So On Right No I Think Being In A Country Like India Like You Mentioned

[00:26:34] And Jugaad Is Something That's We Have Able To We Have Able To Be Able To But However Coming To Industry Like Aerospace It's Extremely Important That We Are Very Very Process Oriented And Not Take Any Shortcuts In Any Of The Process Which Is What We Live By At Our Organization Coming To That I Think What Isro Has Done Is A Beautiful Playbook For Us To Implement Right Where We Don't Compromise On Quality But Also Continue To Work On Efficient Ways Of How Do We

[00:27:04] Produce Components Cheaper We Produce Components Cheaper See Again We Have Access To A Large Ecosystem Of Suppliers How Do You Keep Keep Using Their Resources Also In A More Efficient Manner To Bring Down The Cost Of The Product Naturally Today We Also Have The Advantage Of Labour Arbitrage In The Country As Long As Long As That's There We Keep Using Getting The Arbitrage Of Labour That We Have In The Country And In The Process What We Need To Do Is We Have To Keep Moving Up The Value Chain So That We Start Doing More Complex Work For Which We Will Be Able To Justify Our Cost

[00:27:34] Structure Right And What Do You See As The Biggest Pain Point Or The Biggest Pain Point Or Challenge Or Challenge For You At This Point From A Technical Perspective I Think Two Things One Of Them We Already Spoke Of Which Is Availability Of Materials In The Country We Don't Have Any Aerospace Grade Materials Extensibly Available In The Country Even Today A Large Portion Of It Is Still Continued To Be Imported From The Rest Of The World The Second Point Which Is Very Important For A Startup Is Access To Capital Access To Affordable Capital Is Very Very Very

[00:28:04] Important Today As You Know Cost Of Capital In India Is More More Expensive In India Is Far More Expensive And Compared To Other Western And Today We Are Competing With More Mature Markets Who Have Been In This Industry For Several Decades Whereas India Is Still A Very Very Nascent Player In Addition To That If You Have To Struggle For Affordable Capital In An Industry Which Requires High Capital That Becomes A Challenging Situation That Is What We Are Kind Of Working Through In A Way Right Okay Let's Focus On Some Of The Business Aspects I

[00:28:34] I Mean We Have Spoken About The Tech And The Product Elements How Did You Find Your First Few Customers And What Is That Sweet Spot That You Are Looking At In Terms Of Scaling Right So In Terms Of Our Focus Area We Have Currently What We Are Doing Is We Are Building Capabilities To Address The Global Demand Making India For The Rest Of The World Right So When We Are Choosing The Target Segment Right Like I Spoke Before We Have Seen A Great Value That We Have Been Able To Deliver To The OEMs In The Past We Are Very Focused On The Tier 1s And The Tier 2s

[00:29:04] Who Don't Have Access To The Who Don't Have Access To The So When You Say Tier 1s And Tier 2s Can You Give A Sense Of Like What Size Of Revenue We Are Talking About Or What Kind Of Where In The Value Chain They Are Sure Now These Are Something We Call As Mid-Market Companies In The U.S. And Western Europe They Range Anywhere Between 100 Million Dollars To A Couple Of Billion Dollars In Terms Of Revenue Those Are The Companies Which Are Our Target Segments Even The Current Customers That We Have Fit Into That Particular Space

[00:29:32] And For Perspective How Much Does Boeing Do In Annual Revenue Oh They Run Into Tens Of Billions Of Dollars Right Okay So We Are Focused On Those Big Market Companies Who Are Between 100 Million To A Couple Of Billion Dollars Right In Terms Of Scale And Size And The Pain Point Is That You Want To Give Them The Talent Plus Tech From India From Emerging Markets Basically Okay Okay Are You Able To Get Them To Trust Indian Manufacturing

[00:30:02] Instantly Or I Mean You Think That There Is A Lot Of You Know A Lot Of Effort That We Need To Put To Sort Of Brand India Better No I Think If You See Roshan We Have A Very Good Name In The World For The IT Services That We Provider We Need Not Go And Prove Anything To Anybody While You Are Asking Work For An IT But In The Airspace Manufacturing Things Are Very Different

[00:30:27] We Are Still A Very Nascent Player There Are A Lot Of Concerns That People Have Some Of Them Are Perceptions But Some Of Them Are Also Based On Bad Experiences That They Had In The Past Again Still When We Talk About Airspace Manufacturing In India There Is A Little Bit Of Consciousness Around Will They Be Able To Deliver Good Quality Will They Be Able To Deliver On Time Are There Commitments Up To Marks So Those Those Are Some Of The Things That We Still Fight With At This Stage Of Our Journey

[00:30:55] But Again That's Where We Want To Really Change The Dynamics Of Manufacturing In India And How Do We Start Making This More Reliable For Our Customers See The Mantra Is Very Simple How Do We Deliver Conforming Parts Consistently On Time As Long As We Are Able To Do That We Have A Winner Here Okay Okay And I Mean I Would Assume That You Have Some Concept Of A POC Or Something

[00:31:19] Like That Right I Mean Where You Pick Up Part Of A Certain Contract Or Scope And Then Build Up On That And Get A Wider Sort Of A Contract From These Folks Generally What Happens Is There Is A Lot Of Pre-Work That A Customer Does Before Awarding Any Contract To Manufacturers Here Or Anywhere In The World For That Matter There Are Some Of These Basic Certifications Like Your AS9100 Certification And Other Basic Certifications That You Need To Clear With

[00:31:46] Second Thing Is Then Also Customers Perform An Extensive Audit On Your Quality Management Systems To Understand If You Are Able To Adopt The Process That Are Mentioning AS9100 Properly On The Factory Will We Be Able To Deliver Conforming Parts As Per The Specifications Provided So These Audits Go Through So These Audits Go Through Once These Audits Go Through Then They Sort Of Most Of The Time Give You A Sort Of A Sample Requirement And Try And Observe Your Performance On It And Once You Are Able To Demonstrate Your Performance Then They Scale With You

[00:32:16] Right With All Of This Push From Make In India Right From The Government And The Policymakers And So On Yeah Has It Become Easier For You To Operate In The Space Now? No I Think See The Push From Government Is Definitely Helpful So Some Of The Work That Is Being Done Under The Make In India Program For The Last Decade Or So Has Been Really Helpful For The Growth Of The Industry If You See Today A Lot Of Growth In India In This Sector Actually Happened In The Last 10 Years

[00:32:44] There Is Lots Of Push For In In In Dicianization Make In India That's Definitely Helping The Defence Sector Of Course Once There Is Underlying Capability That's Formed For The Defence Needs The Same Capabilities Can Also Be Used To Cater To The Demands Of The Commercial Aircraft Industry What Do You Think We Need To Do To Sort Of Grow The Ecosystem? I Mean Of Course The Few Things You Mentioned Like Capital For In The Instance Right But Is There Anything Else From A Policy Perspective

[00:33:10] I Mean Because Manufacturing Has This Perennial Problem With Being Over Regulated Right I Mean You Have Tons Of Compliance To Deal With And So On Yeah Is That One Thing I Mean Anything Else? I Think There's Been Significant Progress That's Made By The Government In The Past Few Years Which Is Definitely Helping The Industry But Of Course There's A Lot More To Be Done Making Infrastructure Available Like Industrial Parks That Are Built By The Government And Made It Easily Accessible To Some Of The SMEs

[00:33:39] And The Startups In The Country Making The Capital Easily Accessible Affordable Capital Easily Accessible And A Lot Of Policy Decisions That The Government Do If They Can Help Us Do Faster Execution I Think Those Are Few Things That Can Really Help The Startups Startups Get Along Quickly Yeah I Mean Especially In The US I Mean You Have This Concept Of Like The Industrial War Machine Per Se Right Where Literally The Likes Of Lockheed And So On Are Kind Of Adopted By The State

[00:34:08] There To Sort Of Get These Contracts And Develop Capabilities And Deliver And So On Right So Yeah I Mean It's About Time I Suppose That You Know We Start Adopting A Few Of These Companies And If Not Companies I Mean Like Start Like Favouring These You Know Industries And Ecosystems As Well Right So Yeah Interesting One Thing I Want To Talk About Was On The Investing Bit Of Things

[00:34:34] Right I Mean Typically When VCs Do Come In I Mean They Kind Of Expect That Hockey Strict Sort Of Growth Growth Right But This Is Kind Of A Slow Burn Industry In That Sense I Mean You May Get A Contract Which Is Like A Few Million Dollars But It May Take About Two Years To Close So Yeah So How Do You Convince VCs To Sort Of Fund Your Startup In This No I Think What We Have Observed In The Past Few

[00:35:01] A Couple Of Years Is There Is A New Grown Grown Interest Among The VC Community As Well In The Sectors Like Manufacturing Space Etc So We Have Seen A Lot Of Interest From The VC Community They Also Understand The Needs Of The Industry Right Now You Are Absolutely Right This Is An Industry Where The Gestation Period Is Very Long The Sales Cycles Are Very Long But However Once You Are Able To Get Into A Contract Your Ability To Scale Is A

[00:35:29] The Contract Is A Scale Is A The Contract Sizes Are Larger The Contract Time Is Longer So It's More Sustainable Business But Of Course VCs Also Need To Understand That Patient Capital Is Required For The Growth Of This Particular But Returns In Terms Of Risk Of Returns They Are Far More Efficient And Highly Likely When Compared To Other Industries Right I Suppose I Mean They Need To Have A Wide Horizon Right I Mean You Can't

[00:35:57] You Can't Do The Typical 8 Year Or 10 Year Fund For Aerospace Specifically Right Okay Cool I Think We Have Covered Like A Broad Area In Terms Of The Product The Tech And The Business And Especially The Space As Such Yeah Let's Do A Quick Rapid Fire If You Will Right So What Is One Futuristic Technology That You Are Super Excited About That Will Really Impact Your Industry Right I Mean It Could Be 3D Printing Or AI Or Something Else

[00:36:26] No I Think In The Manufacturing Space Definitely 3D Printing AI Will Do A Lot Of Things Going Into The Future But One Thing I Am Personally Excited About Is The Supersonic Civilian Aircrafts So That's Something That I'm Quite Excited About Okay Is That On The I Mean Is That Has It Started Playing Is That On The Horizon I Mean Because I've Been Hearing About It For Quite A While It's On The Horizon There Are Companies Who Are Making Efforts In That Direction There's A Company Called Boom Aerospace In The US Who Is Making Supersonic Civilian Aircrafts Again Still Not Fully Operational But I

[00:36:56] For Perspective I Mean Let's Say I Mean If I Were To Fly Bangaloo To Hyderabad How Fast Can I Get There I Mean It's Already It's Actually Quite Close I Mean I Believe We Should Be Able To Do London To New York In Maybe 4 Hours Wow Okay Insane If You Had Unlimited Budget Right For Aerospace As Such What Is One Of The First Things You Will Build I Think There Are A Couple Of Things That I Would Think About

[00:37:21] One Thing Is How Do We Help Materials Industry That Would Grow In The Country Making It More Accessible And Affordable For Manufacturers In The Country And Second Thing Is If You Are Able To Build A Next Generation Fighter Aircraft Completely Out Of India That Would Be Super Exciting Yeah We're Talking At A Time When The Aero Show Is Happening In Bangaloo So Yeah Let's Fingers Cross For That What Is One Misconception That Exists About Your Industry That You Want To Clear?

[00:37:52] See Again A Lot Of Times A Lot Of See Again A Lot Of Times Again This Comes From A Lot Of People Who Are Not Very Familiar With The Industry See Generally When You Talk About Aerospace You Think About Rockets Satellites Etc But This Is A Very Very Deep Industry There Are Many Other Things That Happen Today There Are Many Other Things That Happen Today There'S Of Course Rockets There'S Satellites There'S Aircraft There Are There Are EV Toss There Are New Age Flying Vehicles Like We Spoke Of And Of Course This Is Just At A Super

[00:38:18] Official Level But There Are Underlying Capability There Are Component Manufacturers Special Machining Material Suppliers There Are Mills Who Are Supplying Materials Again It'S A Very Deep Rooted And Very Wide Industry Than It'S Presumed To Be Generally Right Okay What Is The Most Optimistic Case For Us To Have Like A Boeing Or An Airbus Out Of India Like How Many Years You Think You Will Take See It'S Just Difficult To Answer

[00:38:45] Again In The Effort That We Have Put In The Past Few Decades Or So Now We Have Indigenously Made Fighter Aircraft In Form Of LCA Tejas That We Are Doing But Again We Took A Lot Of Time But Building A Commercial Aircraft Regional Transport Aircraft That'S Something That We Are Working On In The Country Would Be An Amazing Achievement For Us But Again I Think Maybe A Decade Or So But Again The Thing Is It'S Not About Competing With The Likes Of Lockheed With The Likes Of Lockheed Or The Airbus Of The World Because We Are Coming From A Completely Different

[00:39:16] Starting Point Right I Mean These Are The Companies That Have Been Built For Several Decades Or Maybe A Hundred Years In The Past We Are Starting From A Different Level And Different Vantage Point But We Are Able To Build A Regional Transport Transport Aircraft For The Country For A Country As Big Go As India With So Many Tier 2 And Tier 3 Cities Growing That Will Be An Amazing Achievement For Us Right And I Mean On That Note Is There Like Knowledge Sharing Between Different

[00:39:42] Entities Here In India I Mean Let's Say I Mean So Do You Guys Like Interact Formally With The Air Force Or Ministry Of Defense Or You Know Some Of The Other Research Institutes And So On There'S There Are Very Few Structured Formats During Which There Are Very Few Structured Formats Which Are There To Help These Conversations However There Are Few Unstructured Forums That Happen Where We Meet The Industry Colleagues And Talk About The This Thing However I'M Very Happy To Share There'S A

[00:40:10] A Aerospace Industries Association That'S Very Formed Very Recently Where In They Are Trying To Put Together All The Manufacturers In The Country Together To Just To Enable This Knowledge Sharing And Providing The Capabilities And Capacities As A Forum That We Can Offer From The Country To The Rest Of The World So That'S Being Done That'S Something Which Is Very Positive In This Direction Amazing You Know We'Ve Spoken About Plenty Of Different Aspects Of The Space In Which You Operate Right But If A Young Person Perhaps A Graduate Engineer Or Still In College Is Listening

[00:40:40] To This Right And They Want To This And They Want To Start Up In This Space What Are Like Some Two Or Three Pieces Of Advice That You Would Say What Is A Good Starting Point For Them No I Think Like We Spoke Before Of Course Join J Aerospace But That Would Be An Amazing Thing We Are Building An Amazing Organization I Think One Of The First Smart Factories That'S Ever Built In The Country In This Right But Let'S Say If I Want To Found A Company In This I Want To Start A Company Right Right I Mean Like What Is What Is The Three Pieces Of Advice That I Have To I Think We Briefly Spoke About It Choose The Focus Area That You Want To Be

[00:41:11] Also See Where You Can Be We Have A Saying We Have A Saying We Have A Saying Where We Say How Do You Do Anything Is How Do You Do Everything So Choose Your Focus Area Where You Can Be Best At How You Can Build Build Capabilities There And Then Start Offering Again What My Belief Is That We Should Not Be Harping On Labour Arbitrars That We Get In The Country We Should Start Building The Products Which Are As Good As Made Anywhere In The World

[00:41:35] So Any Young Entrepreneur Or Any Young Kid Out Of The College Should Focus On How Do We Build The Best Product That We Can Offer To The World So Find The Right Problem Statement And Be Find The Right How Do They Find The Problem Statement How Do They Find That Problem Statement If They Don't Have The Benefit Of In Your Case Or Vishal's Case Of Being In The Industry For About 10 Or 12 Years How Do They Pick A Problem That Is Worth Solving Today Unlike Before There Is A Lot Of Content That'S Available Roshan

[00:42:04] There Is A Lot Of Reading Listening That One Can Do Some Podcast Like These Talk To Industry Experts There Are Being Forums Also That Are Created For Example For Example Attending Aero India Would Be A Great Start For One In India Right Because Everybody In The World Is Here You Can Go See What'S Happening In The Industry Who Are The Manufacturers What Are The New Technologies Some Of These Forums Will Definitely Raise The Interest Levels And Then Choosing The Right Academia To Do Certain Specific Courses To Move In This Direction Will Also Help Let'S Say You Have Seed Fund Money Right

[00:42:34] Yes And You Could Actually Like Give A I Mean Fund A Startup Or Something What Are Some Two Or Three Ideas That You Think Are Fundable Right Now I Think Also From A Aerospace Industry Perspective I Think There Is Lots Of Growing Interest In Additive Manufacturing If Somebody Can Figure Out A Right Product Market Fit For Aerospace Industry In The Additive Space That Would Be Very Interesting Interesting Okay

[00:43:02] All Right I Mean This Was Fun I Mean I Think This Is Perhaps The Most Number Of Questions I Have Asked On A Podcast I Mean There Is Just So Much Of Interest In The Space And It Is So Nascent And Also I Feel Like It Is So Integral For Us To Grow Into A Developed A Country And Economy So Thank You So Much For Being On The Podcast Vinky I Mean This Was A Lot Of Fun Chatting With You And Of Course We Should Do A Follow Up Sometime No No No Definitely Thank You Roshin For Having Me Here

[00:43:30] It Was Super Exciting To Chat With You And Of Course The Questions Were Very Deep Very Knowledgeable I Had Fun Having This Conversation As Well Awesome Thank You Alright Folks Thank You For Joining Us On This Episode Of The Startup Operator Podcast I Will Be Back With Another Interesting Founder And Startup Very Soon ッ In This Command Lama