- Indian Navy aims to expand HSL's role beyond shipbuilding to full life cycle support
- Vice Admiral Sobti emphasised partnership covering upgrades and mid-life maintenance
- HSL credited for transformation but must ensure quality and timely delivery standards
The Indian Navy is looking to redraw its relationship with Hindustan Shipyard Limited, moving the Visakhapatnam-based Defence Ministry PSU beyond its traditional role of building and delivering vessels.
That was the message from Vice Admiral Tarun Sobti, Deputy Chief of the Naval Staff, during a visit to HSL on Monday, where he was briefed by Chairman and Managing Director Rear Admiral Chandrasekharan Raghuram (retd) on the shipyard's recent projects and upgraded infrastructure.
Speaking to shipyard personnel, Vice Admiral Sobti was direct about what the Navy now expects. "We would like to partner with HSL as a strategic partner and not just a construction yard," he said, adding that the arrangement should cover a vessel's entire service life rather than end at delivery, encompassing "full life cycle support, upgrades, and mid-life upgrades."
For a shipyard to take on that kind of expanded, long-running mandate, corporate autonomy matters as much as technical capability. HSL's Mini Ratna Category-I status, the higher of the two Mini Ratna tiers awarded to consistently profitable central public sector enterprises, already gives its board latitude to approve capital expenditure, joint ventures, and technology tie-ups without routing every decision through the government. That autonomy could prove useful as HSL is drawn deeper into the kind of continuous, decades-long support contracts the Navy officer described.
The comments come against the backdrop of what the Vice Admiral called HSL's own transformation. He credited the yard's leadership and workforce for the progress made so far, calling HSL "a trusted partner of the Indian Navy for a very long time" and predicting it would become "a very, very important part" of India's growing maritime sector.
Still, he tempered the praise with a caution on fundamentals. "Quality and timely delivery are very, very important," he told the gathering, a signal that any expansion in HSL's mandate will be judged against its ability to meet basic delivery benchmarks.
On capability building, Vice Admiral Sobti pointed to people rather than machinery as the deciding factor. "The most critical aspect is the experience of the people," he said, acknowledging that HSL has already built meaningful experience while expressing confidence in further growth.
The HSL's existing footprint gives some sense of what a fuller strategic partnership could look like. Established in 1941 and India's second-largest shipyard after Cochin Shipyard, it already carries out extended medium refits of Kilo-class submarines, including INS Sindhukirti, INS Vela, and INS Vagli, and previously retrofitted INS Sindhuvir ahead of its transfer to Myanmar.
It is now working with Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited to expand from refits into submarine construction, alongside a February 2026 MoU with Garden Reach Shipbuilders & Engineers to jointly pursue a large national shipbuilding programme.
The Navy's push to deepen ties with domestic yards for sustainment work, not just new construction, reflects a broader effort to reduce dependence on original equipment manufacturers for through-life maintenance, a goal successive naval leaderships have flagged as central to self-reliance in shipbuilding.
