BENGALURU: Responding to the demand from India’s booming military market, Brazilian aerospace and defence giant Embraer is not only looking to offer its flagship C-390 Millennium multi-mission transport aircraft to the Indian Air Force, but is also planning to open a new Embraer India subsidiary in New Delhi, which is likely to be operational by the second quarter of 2025.
“We are about to open a new office in Delhi, where we will have comprehensive operations for our commercial and executive aircraft, defence, service and support, supply chain, and engineering. This is one of the first major steps to expand Embraer’s serious presence in India. It’s just a matter of time, to finalise some agreements with some local companies in Delhi,” Embraer Defense & Security CEO Bosco da Costa Junior said.
Accordingly, the new India subsidiary aims to provide engineering services, undertake strategic sourcing, and handle service and spares support and business development. In February last year, Embraer signed an MoU with Mahindra Defence Systems, with whom the company is offering the C-390 Millennium to the IAF.
The C-390 Millennium was on static display at Aero India 2025, second time in a row. The aircraft is a contender for IAF’s Medium Transport Aircraft (MTA) programme. The IAF is looking for 40-80 aircraft with a cargo capacity of 18-30 tonnes, in a bid to replace its ageing fleet of Antonov An-32s and Ilyushin Il-76s. The other contenders in the MTA include the Airbus A400M Atlas and the Lockheed Martin C-130J Super Hercules, of which the IAF already operates 12 planes.
In terms of its multi-mission capabilities, the Embraer C-390 Millennium can be used for aerial assault, air-to-air refuelling, aerial resupply, search and rescue, special ops, humanitarian aid, medivac, and strategic transport. The aircraft is already flying with the air forces of Brazil, Portugal and Hungary.
Stating that the company is keen on making India its hub to meet tactical transport aircraft demand in the region, through the C-390 Millennium, Bosco said, “We (Brazil and India) have some bilateral agreements in the realm of defence... To help this collaboration, we signed a pact with Mahindra in 2024.
Since then, we are working very hard to promote Embraer being very serious about bringing all the content around the C-390 to India. Not only around the assembly line, but also other types of collaborations, training, MROs, and tech transfer. We look forward to supporting India’s self-reliance push.”
“... We could develop and strengthen the Indian defence industry, reduce defence import expenditure and help the Indian industry to export. We are not trying to have this local content just for Indian demand, but for the globe, delivering aircraft from here to other regions and helping them in training pilots and MROs as well,” he further stressed.
Mentioning that the C-390 is a win-win solution, he concluded: “For the government, we are ready to do this in India, with local industry. For industry, we are looking forward to building this here, along with tech transfer, again with local players. For the IAF, our product delivers more in a faster way, with a very low life-cycle cost. For Brazil and India, it means more collaboration.”