Vivek Lall, Vice-President Lockheed Martin Aeronautics with industry participants

US-based Lockheed Martin signed MoUs with Terero Mobility, Sastra Robotics, and NoPo Nanotechnologies to integrate with its supply chain and boost India's and aerospace and defence industry.

US-based aerospace and defence company Lockheed Martin announced today that it has signed Memorandums of Understanding (MoUs) with three startups from India - Terero Mobility, Sastra Robotics, and NoPo Nanotechnologies.

The startups will integrate with Lockheed Martin’s supply chain, and contribute to the evolution of both the Indian and global aerospace and defence industry.

Vivek Lall, Vice President - Strategy and Business Development, Lockheed Martin, said in a press statement,

“The agreements attest to the commitment of Lockheed Martin to cultivate and integrate indigenous content into global systems and platforms. Through these agreements, we look to provide engineering support, mentoring, and assistance in the qualification of some of the technologies proposed, all of which contribute to our mission of making in India.”

Founded by IIT Madras alumni, Terero Mobility is a spin-off from a Lockheed Martin-sponsored R&D project. The company expects to provide Terero Mobility with a scope of work for design development, test and qualification of the Cargo Ground Buildup System (CGBS) for fixed and rotary wing aircraft, apart from system engineering support and mentoring.

NoPo Nanotechnologies is a Bangalore-based startup working with a vision to enable humanity to be a space faring species. NoPo provides custom engineering solutions to improve safety, reliability and performance of materials using carbon nanotubes. For NoPo, the aerospace company intends to offer a scope of work for qualification of as-produced, purified and metallic sorted HiPCO carbon nano-tubes to provide electromagnetic interference and lightning protection.

Sastra Robotics is a five-year-old robotics startup based out of Kochi, which focuses on manufacturing intelligent robotic platforms for industrial product testing automation. Lockheed Martin expects to provide Sastra Robotics with a scope of work for qualification of robots produced by the company for avionics testing. These products can help in the testing of avionics display of tactical fighter platforms including the F-21.

Phil Shaw, CEO of Lockheed Martin, said,

“We are delighted to have identified, through the IIGP, three inspiring startups that we perceive potential to collaborate with on a global scale. We envision our intended partnership with them to enhance the platforms and programs we’re developing, especially the solutions we wish to offer India.”