In Hyderabad, French aerospace giant Safran and India’s leadership staged far more than a ribbon-cutting. They laid out a joint plan to make India a central node in global aviation and defence supply chains – including a first-ever overseas maintenance centre for Safran’s famous M88 fighter jet engine.
India becomes Safran’s strategic launchpad
For Safran, India is no longer just a promising export market. It is now a core pillar of the group’s long-term strategy.
Safran aims to triple its revenue in India by 2030, targeting more than €3 billion, with around half generated from activities based on Indian soil.
That shift means bricks and mortar, not just contracts. The French group is building factories, training engineers, and transferring technology in a way that aligns almost perfectly with Delhi’s flagship “Make in India” policy.
Hyderabad, one of India’s fastest-growing tech and aerospace hubs, is at the heart of this plan. The city already hosts labs, R&D centres and increasingly sophisticated industrial sites. Safran’s latest investments there mark a step change in scale and ambition.
A mega maintenance hub for civil LEAP engines
The flagship project is Safran’s vast maintenance, repair and overhaul (MRO) centre for LEAP engines, used on the Airbus A320neo and Boeing 737 MAX.
Built for around €200 million, the site covers 45,000 square metres. From 2026, it is expected to handle up to 300 engines a year, backed by a state-of-the-art test bench and, eventually, more than 1,100 employees.
India has orders for more than 2,000 LEAP engines, making it the third-largest market worldwide for CFM International, Safran’s joint venture with GE Aerospace.
That volume explains why Safran is anchoring a global after-sales pillar in Hyderabad. Airlines across South Asia, the Middle East and even Africa could send engines there for overhauls, cutting turnaround times and reducing logistics costs.
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For local workers, the site offers high-skilled jobs in an industry where demand is likely to climb for decades. For India’s aviation sector, it represents a key step towards autonomy in maintaining the engines that will power its booming domestic fleet.
The M88, Rafale’s beating heart, gets a new home in India
First M88 maintenance centre outside France
Right next door to the LEAP facility, a second, quieter but politically sensitive project is taking shape: Safran’s first-ever MRO centre for the M88 military engine outside French territory.
The M88 powers Dassault’s Rafale fighter jet, already in service with the Indian Air Force and soon with the Indian Navy through a new Rafale Marine order. Until now, deep maintenance of those engines depended largely on French infrastructure.
The Hyderabad M88 site will be able to service up to 600 engine modules a year, with a workforce of around 150 specialised Indian technicians.
That capacity is not just about convenience. It gives India far greater control over the availability of its Rafale fleet during crises or high-tempo operations, reducing dependence on overseas supply chains.
The centre is also meant to serve other M88 operators in the wider region, positioning India as a regional hub for high-end military engine maintenance. For New Delhi, this fits its wider ambition to become a defence manufacturing and support base for friendly countries from Southeast Asia to the Gulf.
From customer to co-architect
Safran’s Indian footprint extends beyond maintenance. The group is moving quickly into joint weapon production and co-design, a level up from standard licensed manufacturing.
In New Delhi, Safran has formed a joint venture with Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), a major state-owned defence electronics company. The new entity will produce the “Hammer” modular air-to-ground weapon in India. In France, the Hammer is known as AASM, a guidance and range-extension kit that transforms dumb bombs into precision munitions.
The Hammer can strike targets at many tens of kilometres with metre-level accuracy. It already arms Rafale jets; in India, engineers are working on integrating it on the Tejas light fighter, developed by Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL).
This weapon project is framed not just as a transfer of technology, but as a genuine co-development effort involving Indian and French engineers from the start.
Bangalore: Safran’s engineering and electronics front line
Bangalore, long branded India’s “Silicon Valley”, is the second major vector of Safran’s Indian build-out.
In 2025, the company committed more than €30 million to two new sites there:
- An engineering centre focused on avionics and actuators, expected to host around 250 engineers and technicians.
- A production plant for onboard electronics, planned to employ about 400 people from 2026.
These projects round out the value chain: design, software, hardware, industrialisation and long‑term support. For Safran, it means India is woven into the group’s global R&D and manufacturing network rather than sitting at the end of the sales funnel.
A relationship seven decades in the making
None of this has appeared overnight. Safran’s ties with India date back more than 70 years. The company has worked with HAL for years on helicopter engines, and the duo recently launched development of the Aravalli engine, earmarked for India’s future heavy military helicopters.
Today, Safran runs 18 sites across India, stretching from Bangalore to Hyderabad and New Delhi. Around 3,000 people already work for the group in the country in fields as varied as propulsion, optronics and flight electronics.
Safran chief executive Olivier Andriès has described India as a new “centre of gravity” for the group’s global operations.
The numbers give a sense of the scale:
| Project | City | Investment (approx.) | Capacity / goal | Planned staff |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| LEAP engine MRO centre | Hyderabad | €200m | 300 engines per year | 1,100 people |
| M88 engine MRO workshop | Hyderabad | €40m | 600 modules per year | 150 people |
| Hammer joint venture with BEL | New Delhi | Not communicated | Local production of guided bombs | Not communicated |
| Avionics engineering centre | Bangalore | ~€15m | Development of avionics and actuators | 250 people |
| Electronics production plant | Bangalore | ~€15m | Series production from 2026 | 400 people |
Why India is seen as a new “El Dorado” for French industry
Safran is far from alone. A wave of French groups is betting big on India, across sectors from aerospace to energy.
Dassault Aviation is backing its Rafale sales with extensive industrial offsets. Naval Group has supported Indian shipyards in building Scorpène-class submarines. Thales is installing R&D centres and radar lines, while Airbus and Tata step up aircraft production partnerships. TotalEnergies invests billions in solar farms and early-stage green hydrogen projects.
For these companies, India offers several draws:
- A young, increasingly skilled workforce able to support large-scale engineering and manufacturing.
- A huge domestic market in aviation, defence, energy and infrastructure.
- A government pushing for co-production instead of simple imports, with policies and incentives to match.
- A geopolitical setting where New Delhi seeks diversified partnerships, not dependence on a single supplier nation.
What MRO and co-development actually mean on the ground
The term MRO – maintenance, repair and overhaul – can sound dry. In practice, it is what keeps aircraft flying safely and reliably for decades.
For a LEAP or M88 engine, MRO covers inspections, checks of turbine blades and combustion chambers, replacement of worn parts, balancing of rotating elements and engine testing under simulated flight conditions. A single overhaul can run into millions of euros and requires teams who understand both mechanical engineering and advanced digital diagnostics.
Building this capacity in India means local teams gain scarce skills, while operators gain faster turnaround and more independence in crisis scenarios.
Co-development, as in the Hammer weapon or the Aravalli helicopter engine, goes a step further. Indian and French teams share design responsibility, intellectual property and test campaigns. That structure can reduce political friction over arms sales, since India is not simply buying a finished product but shaping its evolution and local content.
Risks, benefits and what could change next
The strategy is not risk-free. Defence and aerospace projects stretch over decades and depend on political continuity on both sides. Shifts in export controls, local content rules or global crises can slow projects or make them more expensive.
There is also the challenge of building and retaining a skilled workforce. Training hundreds of engine technicians or avionics engineers takes time. If wage costs rise sharply or talent is poached by competitors, the economics of these projects can shift.
The potential gains are substantial. India can reduce its reliance on imported spare parts, build a deeper industrial base and offer services to partners across Asia and beyond. French groups gain access to scale, speed and diversified supply chains at a time when many governments are asking suppliers to be less dependent on single countries.
For airlines in the region, a fully operational Hyderabad MRO cluster could mean shorter grounding periods for aircraft. For armed forces, local repair capacity for engines and smart munitions translates directly into higher availability of jets during tense periods.
If current plans hold, by the end of the decade India will not just host assembly lines for foreign-designed equipment. It will be co-designing engines, weapons and avionics that shape future combat aircraft and civil fleets – with Safran, and other French groups, firmly embedded in that story.
Originally posted 2026-03-04 11:51:07.