Blitz India Business
NEW DELHI: India’s defence exports hit a record last financial year. Split the growth by ownership and the story turns into a question about the private sector.
Defence production reached an all-time high of ₹1.78 lakh crore in 2025–26, up 15.6 per cent from ₹1.54 lakh crore the previous year and 110 per cent above the ₹84,643 crore of 2020–21. Exports set their own record at ₹38,424 crore, up 62.66 per cent from ₹23,622 crore, and now reach more than eighty countries. Set against the ₹686 crore exported in 2013–14, the trajectory is one of the clearest industrial-policy results India can point to in any sector.
The composition is where it gets interesting. Defence public sector undertakings and other public units accounted for roughly 76 per cent of production and the private sector for 24 per cent. On exports, public sector shipments grew 151 per cent year on year while private firms grew 14 per cent. A record built on a 151 per cent surge from one ownership class and a 14 per cent increase from the other is a record with a shape, and the shape matters for what happens next: public-sector export growth of that magnitude typically reflects a small number of large government-to-government contracts, which are lumpy by nature and do not repeat annually.
A decade of numbers: defence exports have gone from ₹686 crore in 2013–14 to ₹38,424 crore in 2025–26, with production reaching ₹1.78 lakh crore and shipments now going to more than eighty countries.
A hundred and fifty-one per cent from one ownership class and fourteen from the other is a record with a shape.
At a Glance
• Production, 2025–26: ₹1.78 lakh crore, an all-time high
• Growth: 15.6 per cent on ₹1.54 lakh crore
• Against 2020–21: up 110 per cent from ₹84,643 crore
• Exports: ₹38,424 crore, a record
• Export growth: 62.66 per cent on ₹23,622 crore
• Against 2013–14: from ₹686 crore
• Destinations: more than eighty countries
• Public sector share of production: about 76 per cent
• Private sector share: about 24 per cent
• Export growth split: public +151 per cent, private +14
The private sector’s constraint in defence exports is not capability but access. A private manufacturer selling abroad needs an export authorisation, a foreign customer willing to buy from a supplier without a long sovereign track record, and an offset or financing package it usually cannot assemble alone. Public sector units clear all three more easily because a government-to-government route carries the sovereign’s credit and its assurance of long-term support. That is a structural advantage, and it is not a criticism of either party — it is a description of how defence procurement works everywhere.
It is also addressable, and India has begun. Export promotion cells that bundle private suppliers behind a single sovereign-backed offer, lines of credit extended to buyer countries with Indian content requirements, and defence attachés mandated to carry private catalogues alongside public ones are all mechanisms other exporting nations use. The target worth setting is not a larger total — the total will grow anyway — but a private share of exports that rises towards its 24 per cent share of production. A defence industrial base whose export performance rests on a broad supplier pool is more resilient than one that rests on a handful of state contracts, and building that pool is the work the current momentum makes possible.