BENGALURU: Indicating a spurt in the number of Indian companies offering products in the lucrative defence sector, the Directorate of Standardisation has seen a spike in the number of companies registering under this sector.
While the Directorate, a wing of the Ministry of Defence, was finding it difficult to register companies under it two years ago, it is seeing an increase in registrations of late, say officials. The registrations ensure that each product manufactured by a company will have a unique international number — NATO Stock Number (NSN) — via which prospective buyers can learn everything about the product.
Speaking to Express, Group Captain G S Visveshwara, Director of Standardisation, said that companies are now eager to register as India will soon be upgraded to a Tier-1 nation of Allied Committee/135 (a group of nations). As of now, more than 2,000 firms have registered, he said.
With the upgradations, which is expected in May, India will be among the 29 countries that will be part of the committee. The National Codification Bureau of the directorate has also completed a web-based codification software, which lists all products manufactured or available in the country and their details.
The software is expected to go live by the end of March, and will have data on close to three million weapons, equipment and tools, he said.
Both these developments will necessitate Indian developers to codify products and inventory and host it on NATO Maintenance Catalogue of References for Logistics (NMCRL) database. Each equipment or parts manufactured in India will have a 13-digit unique NSN. In order to differentiate between products of various countries, the fourth and fifth digit of NSN will indicate the country of origin. For India, the two-digit code is 72.
Registering under it will be essential as even the Defence Procurement Manual has made NSNs compulsory, he added.