Indian shipbuilding experts discussed critical strategies at a maritime conclave to enhance production speed, address cost handicaps, and foster innovation. Proposals included government provision of advanced computing infrastructure for designers, balancing standardized production with custom vessel demands, and implementing import protections to support domestic manufacturing, aiming to position India as a global shipbuilding leader.

Indian shipbuilding experts discussed critical strategies at a maritime conclave to enhance production speed, address cost handicaps, and foster innovation. Proposals included government provision of advanced computing infrastructure for designers, balancing standardized production with custom vessel demands, and implementing import protections to support domestic manufacturing, aiming to position India as a global shipbuilding leader.

Indian shipbuilding experts discussed critical strategies at a maritime conclave to enhance production speed, address cost handicaps, and foster innovation. Proposals included government provision of advanced computing infrastructure for designers, balancing standardized production with custom vessel demands, and implementing import protections to support domestic manufacturing, aiming to position India as a global shipbuilding leader.

Government agencies like the India Ship Technology Centre (ISTC) should act as a centralised “hardware bank”, providing smaller design firms with high-performance AI computing and GPU modelling infrastructure rather than pushing rigid vessel blueprints. This strategic recommendation raised quite an eyebrow at a recent, fiery discussion on shipbuilding in Ahmedabad. And yet, it wasn’t the strangest sounding one.

Kamal Kannagat, Vice President at L&T, kicked off a lively conversation with major shipbuilding experts by asking: “Why are we not building enough of [ships], and why are we not building them fast enough?”

From employment multiplier to idlis

Almost as an answer to this, Sanjiv Walia, CEO of the Shipyards Association of India, detailed the nation’s staggering 24 per cent cost handicap against East Asian yards, all the while emphasising the sector’s vast multiplier effect. “Why is shipbuilding vital? It is the mother industry of heavy engineering, carrying an employment multiplier of 6.4x,” he argued.

It is to this highly technical banter that Commodore Vinit Aerat, Executive Director at Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers (GRSE), slipped in a memorable culinary metaphor from his childhood and applied it to series production.

He recalled his mother’s daily kitchen routine: “By making 50 to 60 idlis daily, her process became perfectly optimised: zero batter wasted, strict clockwork timelines, and standardised quality.”

Cde Aerat’s opinion was simple: executing series orders of standard vessels builds mastery in baseline processes required to construct complex warships and specialised commercial ships.

Is ‘standard’ boring?

However, this push for standardised process mastery locked horns with the market’s demand for bespoke design independence. Buoyancy founder-CEO Prasad Sawant, who is also a designer, strongly opposed uniform vessel templates.

“I strongly caution against forced national design standardisation... Shipowners demand customised, innovative platforms to maintain commercial advantages over competitors,” Sawant doubled down.

He also proposed that central agencies need to empower private designers with shared computing hardware rather than selling fixed blueprints—much like a GPU-hardware bank for smaller players.

While this took care of the design aspect, external shocks remained a key concern for coastal shipyards.

Mandovi Drydrocks Business Head Atreya Sawant, who is also an executive member at the Goa Shipyards Association, warned against policy proposals permitting the duty-free import of aged second-hand vessels into Indian waters.

“We welcome fair competition against new vessels built abroad, but dumping aged foreign hulls undermines domestic manufacturing,” he stressed. And thus went the active panel titled ‘Shipbuilding: Where Are The Indian Ships?’ on day one of THE WEEK Maritime Conclave 2026 in Ahmedabad.

The two-day summit co-hosted by Deendayal Port Authority, was graced by the Union Minister of Ports, Shipping and Waterways Sarbananda Sonowal as the keynote speaker on September 25.

Be it polishing shipbuilding skills as if outputting idlis like a skilful mother in the ‘80s, or be it pushing for innovative design independence, India’s shipbuilders united in their zeal to steer India into the wharf of top-tier global shipbuilding giants. And the answer, according to these experts, was a smooth union of standardised yard discipline with bespoke design innovation. And all of this to be backed by active import protections and state-of-the-art technological infrastructure from the government.

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