As India moves to eliminate Chinese-origin components from military drones over security concerns, defence firm Zen Technologies' drone subsidiary Vector Technics claims to have addressed the issue of dependence on imported drone propulsion systems.
The Indian defence establishment has, in recent months, tightened scrutiny of drone procurement, barring the use of Chinese components in military UAVs. A Reuters report had earlier said military officials informed potential bidders that equipment or subcomponents from "countries sharing land borders with India will not be acceptable for security reasons."
More recently, the defence establishment finalised a stringent framework to ensure that drones procured from domestic manufacturers do not contain Chinese components or electronics.
Against this backdrop, Hyderabad-based Vector Technics, a subsidiary of Zen Technologies, announced that it has become the only Indian company that designs and builds the entire drone propulsion stack in-house, covering both electric and internal-combustion propulsion systems.
Headquartered in Hyderabad, Vector Technics Private Limited is a deep-tech propulsion company building high-reliability motion and power systems for unmanned platforms across defence, surveillance, agriculture and logistics.
According to the company, this addresses a long-standing weakness in India's drone ecosystem.
"For a decade, India built world-class drones on a propulsion supply chain it didn't control. As much as 80 per cent of the motors and controllers inside those platforms traced back to Chinese-origin channels, a strategic dependency hidden inside an indigenous-looking success story," the company said in a recent release.
Vector Technics said its Shamshabad facility now has the capacity to manufacture 3,00,000 propulsion units every year.
The company said most domestic manufacturers continue to assemble imported parts, while others stop at manufacturing electric motors. In contrast, Vector claimed it develops and manufactures the complete propulsion ecosystem, including motors, firmware, power electronics, carbon-fibre propellers, UAV engines and starter-generators, entirely in-house.
The company said the shift comes at a time when India's IDDM (Indigenously Designed, Developed and Manufactured) procurement framework has placed greater emphasis on the origin of critical components rather than just the finished platform.
"It is no longer 'Does it fly?' It is 'Who wrote the firmware, where did the magnets come from, and can the whole system be audited under battlefield conditions?'" the company said.
According to Vector, its propulsion systems use domestically developed firmware, non-Chinese raw materials, and are validated against three NABL-accredited thrust benchmarks before shipment.
The company said its indigenous propulsion portfolio includes BLDC electric motors, 60cc, 170cc and 210cc UAV engines, starter-generators, speed controllers, carbon-fibre reinforced propellers and power electronics for defence and industrial applications.
Explaining the significance of the development, Prudhvi Raj Pakalapati, co-founder and CEO of Vector Technics, said, "A drone is only as indigenous as what drives it. For years, India built sophisticated platforms on propulsion; it didn't control borrowed motors, borrowed firmware, a supply chain that could be cut. We spent seven years changing that, one component at a time."
He added, "The IP lives in Hyderabad in this facility, in the engineers who chose to solve the problem here instead of importing the answer."
"We don't promise indigenous propulsion. We prove it on three accredited benchmarks, before every unit ships," Pakalapati said, adding, "With scalable infrastructure, we're not catching up. We're setting the standard."
