How Pune nurtured the 'parachute woman of India'

When India announced the launch of Operation Sindoor against Pakistan, Pune-based Smita Yeole was out of the country. What she saw stirred her in a deeply personal way, for Smita was in the business of manufacturing a product closely linked to war: parachutes.

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Since 2004, Mumbai-based Oriental Weaving and Processing Mills, which was founded by Smita’s late father, Vishwanath Chalke, has been making parachutes that are used for dropping flares, bombs, drones, cargo, missiles, and humans from aircraft. “There are hundreds of varieties of parachutes,” says Smita, the managing director of the company, adding that there are underwater parachutes and parachutes that drop 16,000 kg tanks from an aircraft in high-altitude regions such as Leh.

Oriental supplies parachutes to the armed forces, and in 2009-10, it became the first private Indian company to export parachutes internationally. While the company manufactures more than 50 products, there is no website listing these.“I cannot disclose details because these are customer-specific and related to a country’s defence. I have a lot of customers who are against each other, so I cannot share one person’s matter with another,” she says. The entrepreneur supplies parachutes to the Israelis and the UK, among others. A quick learner