The Virginia-headquartered aerospace behemoth had come to Indian shores in search of the vast talent in the country, especially as the defence cooperation between India and the US has seen an improvement over the past few decades. Last year, the company inaugurated a global engineering and technology campus in Bengaluru, a state-of-the-art centre built with an investment of ₹1,600 crore and spread across 43 acres, inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
“This strengthens the ‘Make in India-Make for the World’ resolution,” Modi said while inaugurating the facility. “This campus reinforces the world’s trust in India’s talent.” In an interview with Forbes India, Salil Gupte, the president of Boeing India, talks about the American aircraft maker’s India GCC operations and how it has been tapping into the talent here to build aircraft for the world. Edited excerpts:
Our plan was to make use of the incredible Indian talent here to support our global business years ago. Over the years, what has happened is the development of an incredible two-way street where that Indian talent and Indian capability, which is part of Boeing India, has earned its scale, size, and work statement to the extent that now it has certainly grown significantly from the time that we started it. It was never an intent for India to be larger than any other country. It is that the Indian capability and the Indian talent had earned that position.
Q. What is the work being done out of India?
I would say it is beyond GCC at this point. Many global capability centres for global companies are doing application management or IT work. India did not start with that work. India started supporting US-India defence collaboration.
For example, on defence programmes, initially on structural and systems engineering related to those programmes and supporting India’s place in the US defence industrial base, which has been encouraged by both governments. India is taking a larger role in the US defence industrial base. Even in the first Trump administration, this was encouraged, and so our teams have played a large role in that over the years.
Our India teams have played a role in supporting our commercial airplane programmes, both in the development and evolution of our existing products on advanced technologies that support continuous improvement to those products, but also on tools that make our products more efficient. That is all in addition to what many would have viewed as traditional GCC work. Some of these also do occur by our India teams.
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Q. You spoke about the talent base. How does that fare with other countries?
The Indian talent base is extremely strong and that’s why, it’s earned its way to the scale that it has. The Indian talent base is extremely diverse in its capabilities. It is not simply strong at information technology and software development and analytics, which is especially important in this age of transition to AI-driven tools. But it is also incredibly diverse in that it has structures engineering capability, electrical engineering capability, various mechanical engineering capabilities, all the different disciplines that you need within aerospace.
In addition to this, there is an increasing ability to have manufacturing oversight and management of supply chain and logistics. As India becomes a larger part of the US defence industrial base, for example, many of those skills will be important, not just for Boeing, but for all US companies that participate in these areas. I think it is that breadth of Indian talent, in addition to the depth of expertise, that makes India a particularly important partner.
Q. What’s the percentage of work done on an aircraft from India?
We cannot have a number on the percentage of an aircraft made in India or elsewhere. I’m not even sure we track that because it’s not a worthwhile metric, because the supply chain is very complex. You might have a certain amount of spend that occurs at different layers of the supply chain, which then pass through different countries on their way to the final stage, and so, many of those numbers would be double, or triple, counted. Even if we had them, I think it is sufficient to say that, on every single Boeing airplane, there is an element of India involved. There is not a single product that Boeing makes that would not have India, and I think that is a special place for India to be.
Q. What elements would those be from India?
It can be anything. We have the 737 tail fin, which is made in India. The 787 Floor beams are made in India. Fan cowls for engine covers are made in India. Then, of course, there are the various software tools that help maximise the efficiency of the airplane, supported out of India…much of the customer introductory work for commercial airplanes. Before an airplane is delivered, the assessment of how some of the interiors and everything are going to fit together, a lot of that work is also supported from India, including various technical publications…the list is much longer. But I think the Indian teams have a significant role in all those areas.
Q. How big is the Indian team currently?
I will just say it has grown in size to be able to fill out a large campus that we have built in Bengaluru, which is about 43 acres. We have made a significant investment in India over the years, and, at this point, it has spread out across not just Bengaluru, but also Chennai. We employ not just Boeing-badged employees, but also people through our supply chain as well. If you add those two numbers up, it’s probably 18,000. But a good chunk of that is also in our supply chain.
Q. Going forward, what role do you see India playing?
India’s ambitions are very clear. India wants to be a closer partner of the United States in defence and industry, and I think the principles of Prime Minister Modi and now President Trump in the US are close and personal. And so, I think India and the US are going to be in a unique position for collaboration because….there is all this talk about Make in America versus Make in India, and there’s this debate happening, but I think India and America are going to be an exception to that debate.
India has been increasingly involved in the engineering and manufacturing of airplanes, engines, and components across all of the OEMs. Not just Boeing but also Airbus, Honeywell, Raytheon, GE, Rolls-Royce, you name it.
At the same time, India has been one of the largest purchasers of aviation equipment, whether that’s defence equipment or civil aviation equipment from the US or Europe, depending on which company you’re talking about, to the tune of tens of billions of dollars, and supporting millions of jobs in the US and Europe. So there’s a balanced relationship, I think, between the US and India or Europe and India depending on which company you’re talking to. That is well-noted among the leaders and that gives the India-US relationship an advantage, relative to perhaps some other debates that you might see occurring about what gets made where.
Q. How is the India business doing for Boeing now, both on the commercial and defence side?
I think both are extremely strong. India is the third-largest civil aviation market in the world. It is going to have over 2,400 airplanes coming to it over the next 20 years. There have been many orders placed over the last couple of years, and the focus now is on delivery and making sure our customers are successfully operating those airplanes, so that means building the ecosystem to support it.
(This story appears in the 21 February, 2025 issue
of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)
Salil Gupte, president, Boeing India