For a decade, India built world-class drones on a propulsion supply chain it didn’t control. As much as 80% of the motors and controllers inside those platforms traced back to Chinese-origin channels, a strategic dependency hidden inside an indigenous-looking success story.
Vector Technics (a subsidiary of Zen Technologies) has closed that gap. The Hyderabad deep-tech manufacturer today announced its Shamshabad facility has reached capacity to manufacture 300,000 propulsion units a year and confirmed it is now the only Indian company that designs and builds every component of the propulsion stack in-house, across both electric and internal-combustion propulsion.
That last point is the line no competitor can cross. Most indigenous players assemble imported parts. The serious ones build electric motors and stop there. Vector winds its own motors, writes its own firmware, lays out its own power electronics, machines its own components and designs and manufactures own carbon-fibre reinforced propellers and builds its own UAV engines and starter-generators. No one else in India does the full set.
India’s IDDM framework changed the question defence buyers ask. It’s no longer does it fly? It’s who wrote the firmware, where did the magnets come from, and can the whole system be audited under battlefield conditions? When a supply line is cut or firmware goes dark mid-program, the answer isn’t a procurement footnote — it’s whether the aircraft flies. Vector answers at the component level: domestic firmware on trusted silicon, non-Chinese raw materials, and every unit validated against three NABL-accredited thrust benchmarks before it ships.
The complete propulsion stack: designed, developed and built in India:
- Electric motors — BLDC series spanning FPV-class, tactical, heavy-lift cargo, fixed-wing long-range and VTOL platforms. Aerospace-grade, tested to MIL-STD-810G.
- IC engines — 60cc, 170cc and 210cc boxer engines for hybrid-VTOL and fixed-wing UAVs. India’s only production-ready indigenous UAV engine line.
- Starter-generators — built on Vector’s BLDC core, delivering onboard power generation for endurance platforms.
- Speed controllers — designed in India, on trusted silicon, with domestically developed firmware.
- Propellers — carbon-fibre-reinforced polymer, aerodynamically tuned for industrial and defence conditions.
- Power electronics — distribution boards with onboard current sensing and voltage regulation; DC-DC converters for LiDAR, cameras and flight controllers.
The same components already fly on frontline Indian defence programs.
Prudhvi Raj Pakalapati, Co-Founder and CEO, Vector Technics, said: “A drone is only as indigenous as what drives it. For years, India built sophisticated platforms on propulsion; it didn’t control borrowed motors, borrowed firmware, a supply chain that could be cut. We spent seven years changing that, one component at a time: winding our own motors, writing our own firmware, machining our own engines. The IP lives in Hyderabad in this facility, in the engineers who chose to solve the problem here instead of importing the answer. We don’t promise indigenous propulsion. We prove it on three accredited benchmarks, before every unit ships. With scalable infrastructure, we’re not catching up. We’re setting the standard.”
Image: Circuit Digest
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