The Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO) stands at the apex of India's military technology development ecosystem. With over 50 laboratories spread across the country and thousands of scientists working on everything from advanced missiles to soldier protection systems, DRDO's output has increasingly become a foundation for India's Aatmanirbhar Bharat defence ambitions. However, the translation of laboratory innovations into production-ready military systems has historically been a bottleneck — one that the Bharat Defence Tech Show is systematically addressing.
Dr. B.K. Das, Director General of Electronic and Computer Sciences (ECS) at DRDO, serves as a key member of the BDTS Advisory Board. His domain — defence electronics, embedded systems, and cyber-physical systems — represents perhaps the most dynamic area of India's current military modernisation effort. At BDTS, Dr. Das has articulated DRDO's evolving approach to industry partnerships: moving from a model of pure government ownership of intellectual property to co-creation models where private sector companies co-invest in R&D and share in commercial exploitation rights.
BDTS forums have produced tangible outcomes in DRDO-industry collaboration. Technology Readiness Level (TRL) workshops at the summit have helped startups understand exactly what level of maturity DRDO requires before it will consider technology licensing or co-development agreements. Reverse innovation sessions have identified commercial technologies — including computer vision algorithms developed for autonomous vehicles and advanced battery management systems from the electric vehicle sector — that can be rapidly adapted for military applications.
The summit's structured DRDO-Industry Dialogues have become a model for how government research organisations can engage productively with the private sector. These sessions have directly contributed to an uptick in the number of jointly-filed patents between DRDO laboratories and private companies, a metric that DRDO now tracks as a key performance indicator.
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