India is buying autonomy. Almost none of it is Indian.

Indigenisation policy has moved procurement toward domestic suppliers faster than the domestic supply base has matured — particularly in autonomy software, where most fielded systems still depend on foreign stacks. We are building the assignment layer and the communication module in India, for platforms built in India.

That sentence is the whole thesis. The rest of this piece is why we think each part of it holds.

01 — Policy tailwind

Indigenisation lists and iDEX have moved procurement toward domestic suppliers ahead of the domestic supply base. Demand has been legislated into existence before the supply chain was ready to meet it.

That ordering is unusual, and it is the opportunity. A buyer who is required to buy domestic, and cannot yet find a domestic option for the hardest part of the system, is a buyer worth building for.

02 — Software is the gap

Airframes are being built in India. The autonomy and communication layers largely are not.

This is the part that is easy to miss from the outside, because an airframe is visible and a stack is not. A programme can be almost entirely indigenous by mass and almost entirely foreign by decision-making.

03 — One stack, many platforms

The assignment engine is platform-agnostic, so each new airframe widens the market rather than forking the product.

A company that builds one more airframe competes with every other airframe. A company that builds the layer above them gains from each one that ships.