Made-in-India eagle eyes, not eons away, EON wants to make sure

A lot of pride, curiosity and excitement filled most Indians as they watched Operation Sindoor on their screens. An interview with Punit Badeka, Founder & Precision Manufacturing Leader EON Space Labs, helps us to take a closer look at the glorious leaps of technology equipping our forces and soon our space frontiers, business, wild life, traffic and agriculture applications - all being done now with sharper eyes and faster ears.

- By Pratima H

Tell us how you came into this space and how this idea went into orbit? How Indian is it?

We 3 core founders came together as a team from different domains and that was like an entire ecosystem. I came from a company that was building contact lenses. I specialised in single-point diamond turning and fabrication of high-precision optical components. The company I worked for was importing them and I helped them to set up a precision manufacturing lab to do that in India. I was a mechanical engineer with a master's in industrial engineering and management- I set up a manufacturing facility for specialised contact lenses at LV Prasad Eye Hospital, utilising ultra-precision diamond turning machines. These machines, while used for lenses, also have capabilities for manufacturing lenses used in satellites and drones. I met my co-founders, Sanjay Kumar, an optical engineer, and Manoj Kumar, a mechanical engineer, at LV Prasad, where we collectively covered the design, manufacturing, and optomechanical aspects of product development.

So what underlined the make-in-India strength as the company took shape?