From Aero-Engine Parts to Jet-Powered Drones: How Raghu Vamsi Is Building an Integrated Indian Aerospace Company

For much of its history, Hyderabad-based Raghu Vamsi Aerospace Group built its reputation away from the spotlight. It manufactured precision components, complex assemblies and flight-critical hardware for some of the world’s largest aerospace companies. Today, the company is attempting something considerably more ambitious: moving from being a supplier inside somebody else’s aircraft or engine programme to becoming an Indian company capable of controlling an increasingly large part of the aerospace value chain itself.

That transition now stretches from aero-engine components, aerospace gears and specialised manufacturing to indigenous micro-turbojet engines, unmanned aircraft, autonomous systems and nickel-based superalloys. At the same time, Raghu Vamsi is expanding manufacturing in India, Britain and the United States and investing in new facilities designed to bring more of these capabilities under one industrial group.

The scale of that transformation became clearer in September 2026 when Chairman and Managing Director Vamsi Vikas Ganesula outlined the company’s long-term ambition in an interview with ET Manufacturing. Raghu Vamsi, which began its aerospace journey with around 10 employees in 2002, now employs more than 1,200 people and is working towards the larger goal envisioned by the founder’s family: eventually participating in the creation of a complete aircraft designed and manufactured in India.

From Precision Engineering to Global Aerospace

The industrial roots of Raghu Vamsi go back further than its aerospace business. The group says its foundations were established in 1992 in power transmission, followed by cast-iron casting and machining activity from 1998. Aerospace manufacturing became an increasingly important part of the business in the following decade.

That background in precision engineering proved valuable because aerospace manufacturing has unusually demanding requirements. Components installed inside aircraft engines, fuel systems or flight-control assemblies must meet extremely tight tolerances and pass rigorous quality and traceability requirements. Certification and consistent delivery can take years to establish.

Raghu Vamsi gradually built those capabilities while supplying global aerospace manufacturers. The company today names GE Aerospace, Collins Aerospace, Honeywell, Boeing, Safran, Rolls-Royce and Pratt & Whitney among the major aerospace organisations within its customer ecosystem. Its current manufacturing capabilities include CNC machining, fabrication, gears, fasteners, composites, surface treatments, welding, electrical assembly, wire harnessing and testing.

This work remains important to the company. What has changed is the direction of travel.

Raghu Vamsi increasingly wants to move from manufacturing individual components to providing complete subassemblies, propulsion systems and eventually its own products.

A $40-Million Bet on the Next Stage

That expansion received substantial financial backing in July 2026 when Raghu Vamsi announced a $40-million funding round, equivalent to roughly ₹400 crore.

The round was led by Norwest and Skegen Asset Management, with participation from IndusBridge Ventures, GJNX Ventures and investor Ashish Kacholia. Raghu Vamsi said the capital would support manufacturing expansion across India, the UK and the United States while accelerating its Mission Systems and Deep-Tech and Autonomous Systems businesses.

The company’s funding announcement also revealed an order book exceeding ₹2,500 crore and a workforce of more than 1,200 spread across more than 10 facilities in three countries. Its corporate website separately places group revenue at more than $60 million.

What makes the investment particularly significant is where the money is going. Raghu Vamsi is not simply buying additional machining centres to produce more components. It is trying to connect precision manufacturing with materials, propulsion, electronics, autonomous systems and complete unmanned aircraft.

Indra: Building the Engine Before the Aircraft

One of the clearest examples of this strategy is the Indra micro-turbojet programme.

In February 2024, Raghu Vamsi unveiled the INDRA RV25, producing approximately 240 newtons of thrust, following development undertaken by the company’s engineers with academic support from IIT Hyderabad. The company also inaugurated assembly and engine-testing facilities and publicly demonstrated the engine running.

The programme subsequently expanded substantially.

Raghu Vamsi says it has developed four flight-ready Indra variants producing approximately 14, 19, 25 and 40 kgf of thrust. The company is targeting applications including UAVs, target aircraft and missile systems and has stated that design, manufacturing and testing are carried out in India.

At the Paris Air Show in June 2025, Raghu Vamsi publicly displayed its 40-kgf-class micro-turbojet. According to the company, the engine had successfully undergone testing at its Hyderabad facility in the presence of DRDO officials.

Small turbojets occupy an important but often overlooked position in modern defence technology. They can power fast target drones, expendable UAVs, decoys and certain cruise-missile-class systems. India has historically relied substantially on overseas sources for propulsion in these thrust categories.

Raghu Vamsi’s importance will therefore ultimately depend not simply on demonstrating engines, but on proving reliability, repeatability and volume production. The company’s decision to build its own UAVs gives it another way of doing that: integrating its propulsion directly into complete flying systems.

Arrobot Takes Raghu Vamsi Into Complete UAVs

That product-level expansion is being pursued through Arrobot, Raghu Vamsi’s deep-tech and autonomous-systems business.

In December 2025, the group inaugurated its Citadel Campus, a roughly 25,000-square-foot design-to-assembly facility for autonomous systems. At the event, Arrobot presented six indigenous platforms spanning jet-powered UAVs, long-range systems, target drones, tethered surveillance systems, autonomous ground vehicles and micro-turbojet propulsion.

This represents an important change in Raghu Vamsi’s business model. Manufacturing an aerospace component according to an OEM drawing is fundamentally different from designing the propulsion, airframe, flight-control system and mission architecture of a complete unmanned aircraft.

The group is now attempting both.

RV Astra: A Jet-Powered Attritable Strike UAV

Among Arrobot’s most prominent projects is RV Astra, a jet-powered expendable UAV designed for high-speed precision-strike missions.

Raghu Vamsi describes Astra as an indigenously developed platform incorporating its own propulsion technology, flight controls and telemetry. At the Paris Air Show in 2025, the company showcased an Astra configuration for which it claimed a range of around 200 kilometres and speeds of up to 450 km/h, saying flight trials had already begun.

More recent company material describes an evolved Astra concept intended for tactical speeds above Mach 0.8, with adaptive guidance, secure communications and the ability to operate cooperatively with other aircraft. Those more ambitious performance figures remain manufacturer claims and should be regarded as development targets until they are validated through publicly disclosed user trials.

The significance of Astra lies as much in its architecture as in any individual performance figure. If Raghu Vamsi can combine an Indian-designed airframe with an Indian-developed turbojet, flight-control system and mission software, it can remove several imported subsystems simultaneously from an expendable combat UAV.

Maya Brings Twin-Jet Propulsion

The company is pursuing a larger concept through RV Maya, a twin-jet unmanned aircraft.

Arrobot describes the Maya 300A as using two 40-kgf-class micro-turbojet engines and being capable of autonomous strike, ISR and decoy missions. Company material says the aircraft uses catapult launch, can operate at altitudes above 6,000 metres and is being designed to carry releasable payloads.

One particularly interesting proposed application is electronic deception. Arrobot says Maya could be configured to imitate aspects of an aircraft’s infrared signature, allowing it to function as a decoy in contested airspace.

Again, these are developmental capabilities rather than evidence of an operational military system. But Maya demonstrates how Raghu Vamsi is using the same propulsion technology as a building block for increasingly sophisticated platforms instead of treating the engine as an isolated product.

The Missing Layer: Materials

Building engines and aircraft in India still leaves a major vulnerability if their critical raw materials must be imported.

Raghu Vamsi is now trying to address that problem through a new nickel-based superalloy manufacturing facility in Telangana.

Announced in July 2026, the project involves an investment of approximately ₹600 crore and is intended to produce around 5,000 tonnes of superalloy material annually. Commercial production is targeted for January 2028.

The proposed plant is particularly ambitious because it is intended to integrate several stages of metallurgy under one roof, including vacuum melting, forging, heat treatment, vacuum casting and powder metallurgy.

Nickel-based superalloys are critical to components that must continue operating under extreme temperature and mechanical stress. They are used extensively in aero engines, gas turbines, missiles, space systems and energy equipment.

Raghu Vamsi has placed former MIDHANI Chairman and Managing Director S.K. Jha in charge of the project. The company says customer engagement for qualification of materials and processes has already begun.

The strategic logic is straightforward. A company that manufactures aero-engine components but depends upon overseas suppliers for specialised alloys remains exposed to disruptions far upstream in its supply chain.

Developing domestic alloy production could allow Raghu Vamsi eventually to connect material production, forging or casting, precision machining and finished aerospace assemblies inside a much more controlled industrial ecosystem.

Aerospace Gears: Another Difficult Technology Layer

Raghu Vamsi has pursued a similar localisation strategy in aerospace gearing.

In 2022, it formed Skanda Aerospace Technology with US-based Rave Gears to establish specialised manufacturing of aerospace gears and gearboxes in Hyderabad. The project was announced with an investment plan of approximately ₹250 crore.

Skanda subsequently inaugurated manufacturing capability for components including spur gears, straight and spiral bevel gears, curvic couplings and complete gearboxes.

Aerospace gearing is a specialist field because failures in helicopter transmissions, engine accessory gearboxes or other flight-critical systems can have catastrophic consequences. Manufacturing requires sophisticated gear cutting, grinding, heat treatment, inspection and process control.

Adding this capability complements Raghu Vamsi’s aero-engine and propulsion ambitions while reducing dependence on external specialist suppliers.

Expanding Beyond India

At the same time as it deepens manufacturing in India, Raghu Vamsi has been acquiring businesses overseas.

In 2024, the group acquired the PMC Group in the United Kingdom, adding specialised precision-manufacturing capability serving oil-and-gas OEMs.

It later acquired WMT Precision LLC in Syracuse, New York, a company with decades of experience manufacturing critical aero-engine fuel nozzles and possessing specialised Nadcap-approved processes including vacuum brazing, EDM and heat treatment.

The acquisitions serve two purposes. They place Raghu Vamsi physically closer to major overseas customers while giving the Indian group immediate access to manufacturing knowledge and specialist processes that could take years to build organically.

Vamsi Vikas has described this approach as a way of shortening the technological learning curve rather than merely expanding geographical presence.

A ₹300-Crore Hyderabad Manufacturing Hub

The centre of the group remains Hyderabad.

Raghu Vamsi began developing a major integrated facility at Hardware Park near Hyderabad International Airport after acquiring approximately eight acres there. The original project involved around ₹300 crore of investment and roughly 200,000 square feet of R&D, assembly and manufacturing space across three buildings.

The facility was conceived to support high-precision contract manufacturing as well as more complex defence products, including rocket motor casings, thrust-vector-control hardware, air bottles, UAVs and micro-turbojets.

The July 2026 funding round is intended partly to accelerate this integrated manufacturing campus as the company scales its three principal businesses: precision OEM manufacturing, mission systems and propulsion, and deep-tech autonomous products.

Andhra Pradesh Could Become the Next Expansion Base

Raghu Vamsi is also planning a second major aerospace and defence ecosystem in Andhra Pradesh.

On May 15, 2026, Raghu Vamsi Machine Tools signed an MoU with the Andhra Pradesh Economic Development Board for a proposed ₹500-crore manufacturing project spread across about 100 acres.

The company says the complex will include micro-turbojet manufacturing, UAV production and integration, advanced precision aerospace manufacturing and a dedicated UAV testing, evaluation and flight-validation range. The project is expected to support approximately 1,000 direct and 2,000 indirect jobs if implemented at the proposed scale.

The MoU formed part of a broader group of aerospace and defence investments announced in Andhra Pradesh in the presence of Defence Minister Rajnath Singh and Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu. The Ministry of Defence confirmed that multiple private-sector defence MoUs were exchanged during the May 15 event.

A dedicated flight-test range would be particularly valuable to Raghu Vamsi because UAV development cannot be completed on factory floors. Aircraft must accumulate test hours through increasingly demanding flight envelopes before they can become credible military products.

The Integrated Aerospace Model

Taken individually, none of these projects fully explains Raghu Vamsi’s strategy.

Placed together, however, the structure becomes clearer.

The company is attempting to build capabilities across advanced materials → precision components → aero-engine parts → gears and assemblies → propulsion → avionics and electronics → autonomous systems → complete UAVs → testing and validation.

That is a much more difficult strategy than remaining a specialist component manufacturer, but it potentially captures considerably more value.

It also reflects a broader change occurring in India’s private aerospace industry. Companies that initially entered global supply chains as machining suppliers are increasingly attempting to become system integrators and intellectual-property owners.

For Raghu Vamsi, the micro-turbojet engine is particularly important in that transition. Once a company owns propulsion technology, it becomes possible to design multiple platforms around the same engine family rather than waiting for another OEM to provide specifications.

Astra and Maya illustrate precisely that approach.

Still a Long Distance From a Complete Aircraft

There is also reason for caution.

A company can demonstrate engines and UAV prototypes years before those products enter large-scale military service. Qualification, reliability testing, weapon integration, environmental trials, user evaluation and productionisation are long processes.

Raghu Vamsi’s published UAV performance characteristics should therefore be understood primarily as company specifications and developmental targets unless independently confirmed through military trials or procurement documents.

The superalloy plant is similarly an industrial project under development, with commercial production targeted for 2028 rather than an existing source of qualified engine material.

Yet this distinction does not reduce the significance of what the company is building. Aerospace capability is accumulated through exactly these intermediate stages.

Two decades ago, Raghu Vamsi was primarily learning how to manufacture precision aerospace components to global standards. It subsequently moved into complex assemblies and critical defence hardware. It then developed micro-turbojets. Those engines are now being integrated into indigenous UAVs. Simultaneously, the company is developing the material, gear, electronics, testing and manufacturing infrastructure needed to support increasingly complete systems.

That trajectory explains why Vamsi Vikas now speaks openly about an even larger ambition.

In his September 2026 interview, he predicted that within the next decade India would possess an aircraft designed, manufactured and delivered entirely within the country. It is an aspiration closely connected with the dream that originally drove his family’s entry into aerospace.

Raghu Vamsi is not building that complete aircraft today. But it is steadily assembling many of the industrial capabilities that would be necessary for Indian companies to participate in such a programme tomorrow.

That is what makes the company noteworthy.

The story is no longer simply that an Indian manufacturer can machine an aero-engine component for Boeing, GE, Rolls-Royce or Safran. It is that a company which learned aerospace manufacturing through those global supply chains is now trying to convert that knowledge into Indian propulsion, Indian unmanned aircraft, Indian materials and eventually increasingly complete Indian aerospace systems.

From precision parts to engines, and from engines to jet-powered drones, Raghu Vamsi’s evolution captures a larger transition underway in India’s aerospace industry: from manufacturing what others design towards designing, manufacturing and owning the systems themselves.

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References

Raghu Vamsi Aerospace Group — July 20, 2026: $40-million funding round, more than 1,200 employees, facilities across India, UK and US and order book exceeding ₹2,500 crore.

ET Manufacturing — September 3, 2026: Interview with Vamsi Vikas Ganesula covering Raghu Vamsi’s evolution, superalloy strategy, overseas expansion and long-term aircraft ambition.

Raghu Vamsi Aerospace Group: Corporate manufacturing capabilities, global customers, business divisions and international operations.

Ministry of Defence / PIB — May 15, 2026: Official record of Andhra Pradesh’s aerospace and defence investment event at which private-sector defence MoUs were exchanged.

Raghu Vamsi Aerospace Group — Indra programme: Four micro-turbojet variants in the 14, 19, 25 and 40 kgf classes for UAV, target-drone and missile applications.

ET Manufacturing — July 22, 2026: Proposed ₹600-crore integrated nickel-superalloy manufacturing project in Telangana, with commercial production targeted for January 2028.

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