Indian companies bullish on business prospects at Singapore Airshow

SINGAPORE: Indian-origin companies are bullish on business prospects from the five-day Singapore Airshow, which began on Tuesday with global aviation industry stakeholders, including many from India like BrahMos Aerospace.

Returning to a full-scale edition, the Singapore Airshow is making a strong comeback from February 20-25 with over 1,000 participating companies from more than 50 countries and various regions.

Indian heavyweight BrahMos Aerospace is in talks with several Southeast Asian countries for supplying its supersonic missiles which is globally renowned for its success rate.

“We are discussing the supply of BRAHMOS missiles, and are hopeful that our participation in the Singapore Airshow would lead to more fruitful opportunities,” Praveen Pathak, Director for Market Promotion and Exports at BrahMos told PTI on Tuesday.

Expecting more delegates from the region at the BrahMos display showroom, he underlined the importance of being at the show in Singapore, which is strategically located in the prosperous Southeast Asian region.

“We feel there is vibrancy in the Asian markets, recovering from the pandemic,” Pathak said as he elaborated on prospects, following the successful supply of BRAHMOS missiles to the Indian armed forces, and an ongoing contract with the Philippines marines.

From the StartUp business segments, KeepFlying is working in the ecosystem that is transforming a USD 170 billion Aircraft Asset Management Industry.

The Singapore-based Aviation AI StartUp has built the first of its kind GenAI powered aviation data platform that helps make airworthiness and maintenance data sets S/LLM ready and in a usable format for commercial insights generation by unleashing their AI agents, said Chandrasekhar Jayaramakrishnan, Chief Product Officer, who is leading the KeepFlying team from both Singapore and Chennai technologists.

KeepFlying® is enabling a new era of the Aviation Digital FinTwin® (Financial Twin) through its Aviation Language Model-driven data-to-dollar platform to help Airlines, Lessors, and MROs save on these additional spends, he said at the Singapore Airshow.

“Our Indian business is set to grow by a good 30 per cent by the end of this year,” added Tarun Mathur, Senior Sales Manager for India at the Hong Kong-headquartered Topcast, a global supplier of parts, services, and solutions for the aviation industry.

Speaking at the Airshow, Mathur said Topcast’s Indian business grew in 2023 by 5.5 per cent on the year and future prospects are good.

Topcast’s Indian business comes from civil aviation and original equipment manufacturers with HAL, Tata Advanced, and Wipro among leading customers.

Mathur sees future business driven by Maintenance and Repair and Overhaul (MRO) Organisations, pointing out Air India’s new MRO being set up in Bengaluru, in addition to two operated by GMR MRO and Airworks.

Norman Lazarus, President of Texas-based Aviva Metal, also has good growth prospects in India as well as in the global aviation and oil and gas industry.

The supplier of heavy-duty products made from brass, bronze, and copper alloys sees the strong trend continuing for the next five years. He expects growth in the Indian market, having already started supplying products and solutions.

This year’s line up the Singapore Airshow is extensive, with 90 per cent of the top 20 global aviation companies in attendance; including well-known exhibitors like Airbus, AVIC, BAE Systems, Boeing, Bombardier, COMAC, Dassault, GE Aerospace, General Dynamics, Honeywell, L3Harris, Leonardo, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Rolls-Royce, RTX, Safran, ST Engineering, Textron Aviation, and Thales, said the organisers, Experia.