Can India chart a new course for its ship design ecosystem?

Now more than ever, there is reason for Antony Prince to feel hopeful. With India stepping up in the maritime sector, the 80-year-old—who has spent more than 53 years designing ships—expects the segment to finally get its due.

“A good design makes a good ship,” he says. “It is the foundation on which a ship is built. It defines how a ship will be built and operated based on naval architectural and marine engineering fundamentals, classification and regulatory bodies’ rules, international safety regulations and trading and operating needs.”

The resultant system combines architecture, structural engineering, interior designing, power generation, electronics, cargo holds, loading-unloading systems, and weapons and sensor systems—in case of warships—to make a floating home.

Prince has worked in countries such as Japan, China, South Korea and in Europe, and is the CEO of the Kochi-based Smart Engineering & Design Solutions. While in China from 1993 to 2014, he launched more than 10 designs, built over 150 ships and helped a scrapyard morph into the country’s second biggest shipyard. But it is his effort to build an ecosystem that stands out—he has mentored and trained 500 marine engineers in India and, in 2019, he founded the Indian Marine Designers Association to bring together 12 major ship design companies under a single umbrella.

“Shipyards construct what designers have already engineered,” says Sajeendra K. Nambiar, executive director of the Navi Mumbai-headquartered Sea Tech, a ship designing firm. “Construction usually represents about 20 to 30 per cent of a ship’s total life-cycle cost, while operation, maintenance, fuel, repairs, upgrades and disposal account for the remaining.”

What he means is that good design cuts cost through lower fuel use, reduced maintenance, higher reliability, easier repairs, longer service life, improved crew efficiency and better environmental performance.

The community of Indian ship designers includes independent design houses, international firms with offices in India, specialist naval consultants and engineering divisions of large shipyards.

Says Prasad Prabhakar Sawant, founder CEO of the Goa-headquartered Buoyancy Consultants: “There are close to 45 ship design engineering companies in India. Of these, 15 to 20 are active. These companies are spread across states on both coasts, though most are along the west coast.”

He says that it was during his travels, after the 2008 financial crisis, that he saw the problem. “I repeatedly heard how stalled shipbuilding projects had eroded international confidence in India’s shipbuilding industry.... Having worked in Europe, our cofounders knew the problem was not Indian talent—it was management and execution. We believed India could deliver world-class engineering if built on the right foundation. That led us to establish Buoyancy.”

While naval and coast guard platforms are designed by the Navy’s Warship Design Bureau—supported by the public sector shipyards where these vessels are made—only a few commercial ships are built in India. And these mostly have foreign designers attached to them. This is because the foreign companies that place the order nominate these designers. Indian companies mostly design smaller commercial vessels such as tugs, harbour craft, barges and similar workboats.

“Most large and technologically sophisticated commercial vessels constructed in India are generally designed by established European and South Korean design companies,” says Nambiar. “Indian marine design houses often collaborate with these international firms through technical partnerships or licencing arrangements, providing local engineering support, detailed design, production engineering and project execution services.”

However, Indian PSUs have now started placing orders in Indian shipyards. The condition is that the shipyard must have prior experience of building and designing similar vessels or should engage a foreign designer with such experience. “This in effect excludes Indian designers,” says Prince. “The ship designers’ market is limited when it comes to full designs as Indian designers have less experience.”

In countries like Japan, Korea, China, the US and the UK, ship designing is considered a ‘knowledge industry’. A good example is the UK and Europe. Though they are not dominant in the shipbuilding market any more, they still have superiority in ship design and are selling these designs to countries like India.

“They also protect their marine ancillary industries by controlling the design,” says Prince. “Major Japanese shipyards have their own design division, even model testing facilities. With all the changes that have taken place, they have spun off the design departments to standalone ship design companies. In Korea, there are both shipyard design departments and independent private design companies amply supported by the government.”

So, for the Indian ship designer, it has been a tough journey so far, though the government’s recent push offers some hope. “Skill development is an important area where government support is essential,” says Sawant. “We continuously lose trained designers to foreign employers. With global shortage of skilled ship designers, this has become a major challenge.”

He adds that the overall risk-averse mindset is also an issue. “The concept of a ‘proven design’ often works against the spirit of innovation,” he says. “This can change if the focus shifts from ‘proven design’ to ‘proven capabilities’, while clearly defining responsibilities related to risk.”

The issue is not a lack of engineering talent. “Rather, it is the absence of a fully integrated ecosystem that allows design companies to progress from production engineering to original concept and basic design, particularly for sophisticated commercial vessels,” says Nambiar. “As India aspires to become a leading maritime nation, it is imperative that indigenous ship design be recognised not merely as an engineering service supporting ship construction, but as a strategic national capability that drives innovation, technological self-reliance, industrial competitiveness and long-term value creation.”

The bad news is that the country’s shipbuilding is starting from a low base—India builds just 0.067 per cent of global ships compared with China at 70 per cent. The good news is that the sky, or the endless seas in this case, are the limit.