Blitz India Business
NEW DELHI: The sixth defence indigenisation list is worth ₹3,070 crore. Read as an addressable market rather than a policy announcement, its most important feature is how small each individual opportunity is.
The Department of Defence Production notified the sixth Positive Indigenisation List on 18 August: 405 items with an estimated business potential of ₹3,070 crore, of which 389 items belong to Defence Public Sector Undertakings and 16 to the Indian Coast Guard. Divide the value by the count and the average item is worth about ₹7.58 crore. For an industrial policy that is an unremarkable figure. For a supplier it is the whole proposition: ₹7.58 crore is an order a single mid-sized engineering firm can finance, tool up for and deliver without assembling a consortium or raising equity — which is exactly the size at which MSME participation stops being an aspiration in a policy document and becomes a bid.
405 items, ₹3,070 crore: Union Defence Minister Rajnath Singh in New Delhi on 17 August 2026, a day before the sixth Positive Indigenisation List was notified.
More than 33,000 items have been offered to Indian industry on the SRIJAN portal since 2020. More than 15,700 have been indigenised. A little under half — and the other half is the pipeline.
At a Glance
• Sixth Positive Indigenisation List: notified 18 August 2026
• Items: 405 · value: ₹3,070 crore · average: about ₹7.58 crore
• Split: 389 DPSU · 16 Indian Coast Guard
• Item classes: Line Replaceable Units, sub-systems, sub-assemblies, spares, components, raw materials
• Routes: ‘Make’ procedure and in-house development, with MSME participation
• First five lists: 5,012 items
• SRIJAN portal: 33,000+ items offered up to June 2026
• Indigenised: 15,700+ items · about ₹9,000 crore import substitution over five years
• DPSU orders to domestic vendors: about ₹10,000 crore up to March 2026
The pipeline behind the list is larger than the list. The SRIJAN portal, opened by the Department in August 2020 for DPSUs and Service Headquarters to offer items to Indian industry, had carried more than 33,000 items up to June 2026, of which 5,012 were formally notified across the first five Positive Indigenisation Lists. More than 15,700 items have been successfully indigenised, producing an estimated import substitution of about ₹9,000 crore over the last five years, while DPSU procurement orders with domestic vendors — including in-house production — ran to about ₹10,000 crore up to March 2026. For a supplier building a business case, the ratio to hold on to is that a little under half of everything ever offered has been indigenised: the conversion is real, and the unconverted balance is the addressable pipeline.
Two features of the sixth list change how it should be bid. First, every item carries an indicative timeline for indigenisation, which converts an open-ended development risk into a dated one — the single biggest determinant of whether a small supplier can get working capital against a defence order. Second, the item classes are Line Replaceable Units, sub-systems, sub-assemblies, spares, components and raw materials across the ALH, LUH, Su-30MKI, LCA and AL-31FP engine, the T-72, T-90 and BMP-II, warships, the Konkurs-M, Invar and MRSAM systems, radars, sonars, fire-control and satellite communication systems. These are recurring-consumption items on platforms already in service, which means the demand does not end with a single order. The constructive ask from industry is straightforward and cheap for the Department to grant: publish the indicative timelines and expected annual offtake volumes item by item. A supplier who knows the annual quantity can price the tooling. One who does not, cannot.