Building India's Talent Pool in Aerospace and Defence

NEW DELHI. India is one of the fastest-growing major economies projected to be $5 trillion before the end of this decade. With digital and technology transformations driving a significant portion of this growth, the talent in India is a force multiplier for driving scalability across diverse sectors.

- AHMED ELSHERBINI

India is uniquely positioned as a global talent hub with the availability of key skills and talent at scale. Coupled with a culturally diverse workforce, a growing young and skilled population, eminent universities to source talent from, a thriving startup culture, ease of doing business, and the government's focus on the indigenous development in the aerospace and defence (A&D) sector through its Make in India and Aatmanirbhar Bharat (self-reliant India) vision makes India a hotbed of talent. Boeing continues to be a strong partner of India's aerospace sector for over eight decades, both in the mission readiness and modernization of India's defence forces, as well as a mainstay of India's commercial aviation sector.

And, has been committed to making investments in India to help create jobs, bolster India's manufacturing sector, and build the right ecosystem to support and build the talent necessary to serve the global and local A&D sectors.

The Boeing India Engineering & Technology Center (BIETC) in Bengaluru and Chennai which started with a small base of engineers has today evolved into the largest of-its-kind outside of the U.S. More than 4,500 engineers and technologists contribute to global aerospace growth by delivering cutting-edge R&D, innovation, and high-quality engineering work for Boeing's defence, space, and commercial businesses in India for India, and for the world.

Over the last year, we hired close to 1,500 engineers across diverse skill sets to continue supporting our key defence platforms and programs in India like F/A-18 Super Hornet, P-81, F-15, KC-46, AH-64 Apache, and CH-47 Chinook, and aerospace platforms.