Overview
- At VIMARSH 2026 in New Delhi, held Tuesday, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and DRDO unveiled a set of operational steps to deepen private‑sector participation in defence R&D and manufacturing.
- DRDO handed over nine Licensing Agreements for Transfer of Technology (LAToTs) to 13 manufacturing partners, allowing those firms to produce specific DRDO technologies commercially under licence.
- A new MSME and startup facilitation framework will provide direct funding, incubation support and dedicated access to DRDO test facilities to help small firms develop and validate defence systems.
- DRDO also introduced a standardised, secure mechanism to share its software source code with licensed industry and signed an agreement with the Quality Council of India to roll out SAMAR 2.0 for manufacturing maturity benchmarking.
- The announcements build on earlier reforms such as the Positive Indigenisation List, iDEX and the decision to allocate 25% of Defence R&D funds to private entities and signal the start of implementation steps that still need detailed timelines and monitoring to scale outcomes.