The licences were issued by the department of industrial policy and promotion under the ministry of commerce and industry. Tata Power SED would be the prime contractor for the sale of equipment to the defence ministry.

Tata Power SED, a leading domestic player in strategic electronics, is harnessing its "systems and engineering" capabilities to emerge as a prime contractor to defence equipment and systems.

Earlier this year, Tata Power SED secured orders for Pinaka multi-barrel rocket launcher system from the Indian Army and futuristic automatic data handling system for air defence from the Indian Air Force.

"SED is now poised to harness its multi-disciplinary capabilities and emerge as a long-term reliable partner to Indian defence forces. Over the next five years, these licences open a domestic addressable market of over Rs20,000 crore, for Tata Power SED, which includes upgrades of existing platforms. Additionally, business opportunities through the ''offset" clause (as set out in the defence procurement procedure - DPP 2006) for systems design, engineering and testing services will also be targeted by the company, opening up the export market," said Rahul Chaudhry, CEO of Tata Power SED.

The seven defence production licences involve design, development, manufacture, assembly and upgrades of:

• Electronic warfare systems for the army, navy, air force, para-military and inland security;
• Warfare enablers, development of specialised antennas and masts. ruggedisation of COTS and specialised software for network management, monitoring and security. integrated GIS with communication and navigation system for defence and civilian applications, global positioning systems and GPS-based vehicle navigation and tracking systems, etc;
• Avionics, airborne assemblies, systems and equipment for aircrafts, helicopters and AWACS;
• Air defence guns, field artillery, naval guns, tanks, combat vehicles, anti-tank weapons systems;
• Naval combat, air defence, artillery, command and control systems, border security and surveillance;
• MIL (military grade) products such as display consoles, rugged computers, workstations servers, on board computers, etc; and
• Weapon systems - rocket and missile launchers.