India Has Big Potential For Night Vision Devices: ITT Exelis

ITT Exelis is a leader in Command, Control, Communications, Computers, Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance (C4ISR) related products and systems and information and technical services, supplying military, government and commercial customers in the United States and globally. The company, which is also in the space business, payload and weather satellites, talks about its future business plans and its tryst with India. The company has formed a strategic alliance with Tata Advanced Systems (TASL) to support Generation 3 night vision requirements in India. “Tactical Communication System is expected to generate a significant value over the next three years however it’s enough to cover our investment in India,” says ITT Exelis EVP Mike Alvis. “Night vision is a huge opportunity for us. We have sold 700,000 pieces in the United States in the last 10 years and India is the only country that has the potential to buy night vision about 300,000 in number. Although it is more for defense, some of the first sales might be in the homeland security such as special forces,” he adds. With the night vision from a performance stand point the company does not have a competition. Aligning with Tata was a good bet, since they have multiple capabilities. The company, which is also in the space business: payload and weather satellites, talks about its future business plans and its tryst with India. But then again, they will only have a focus on the communication systems and look at others areas once they have a clear idea on the numbers and programs. The company feels that the deal with the Tatas will mature in the next one year, since they will have an assembly factory in India, and the components will be imported to their specifications. The company has a presence in 63 countries however, are very new to the Indian market with their night vision. Their biggest challenge right now is that they have sold only about a 150 night vision goggles into the Indian market so there aren’t a lot of customers out there who’ve had a chance to observe them. Once they proliferate special units like homeland security and military India would see the advantage that other countries are having with their devices. They feel that in the Asia-Pacific region, Australia is clearly the next highest potential market. Although, Australia is not growing as fast as India, they have similar advantages and are not concerned about indigenous manufacturing and offsets. “We have a lot of naval products to sell in Australia. We’ve had similar partnerships (like TATA) for more than a decade in South Korea with Samsung and in Japan with Kanematsu. However, the growth markets happen to be India, Australia and Taiwan,” says Alvis.