On October 14, a new production line came alive at Hoskote, near Bengaluru — and with it, one of India’s most quietly consequential aerospace manufacturers set out its boldest ambition yet. Gopalan Aerospace India Private Limited (GAIPL), the aerospace arm of Gopalan Enterprises, announced that it plans to raise its drone output from about 25 units a month to 500 within a year — a twenty-fold leap in production that would put a serious Made-in-India drone fleet on the map.
The inauguration was no quiet affair: Karel Havlíček, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry and Trade of the Czech Republic, was there alongside C. Prabhakar, Director of Gopalan Enterprises. The same day, GAIPL signed five memoranda of understanding with Czech partners covering drones, jet-powered UAVs, unmanned traffic management, fire-extinguishing solutions and thermoreflective coatings — the first step in a new India–Czech aerospace partnership.
A factory engineered for scale
The Hoskote campus is the hardware behind the headline numbers. Spread across 10.5 acres, it houses more than 150,000 square feet of manufacturing infrastructure backed by roughly US$40 million of investment. Its capabilities read like a checklist of everything a serious aerospace programme needs: precision CNC machining, sheet-metal fabrication, advanced composites, aerostructures and complex assemblies — offered both as Build-to-Print and Build-to-Spec solutions, so GAIPL can manufacture to customer designs or engineer to technical requirements.
The company holds AS9100D and ISO 9001:2015 certification, plus Nadcap accreditation for composites and welding — the quality credentials that open the door to global aerospace supply chains. Its customer and programme ecosystem already includes Hindustan Aeronautics Limited, Israel Aerospace Industries, Larsen & Toubro, DRDO, Tata Advanced Systems, ISRO, the National Aerospace Laboratories, Expleo and ECIL, as well as the Indian Army and the Indian Air Force.
The scale-up plan is backed by real capital deployment: GAIPL announced a Rs 100-crore investment plan over three years in early 2025, and about Rs 75 crore of it has already been spent — including on the Hoskote plant — with the full deployment expected to complete by March 2027.
From 25 to 500 drones a month
The drone story is where the new ambition lands hardest. Of the five UAV product lines GAIPL has under development, two are already in serial production. The company describes its loitering-munition systems — kamikaze drones with reported ranges of 50 to 80 kilometres — as the spearhead of a broader unmanned-systems portfolio it has been developing indigenously for three years. GAIPL is also in talks with international technology companies on UAV collaboration, technology transfer and joint development.
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“We have the technology. What we are now working on is how to scale production,” C. Prabhakar told The Economic Times. “We have set up the factory system for large-scale production.”
From supplier to strategic partner
“India’s aerospace and defence ambitions demand more than manufacturing capacity — they require the ability to engineer and deliver increasingly complex systems to global standards,” said C. Prabhakar, Director of Gopalan Enterprises. “Our investment in Hoskote strengthens this platform and our ambition to move up the value chain — from manufacturing supplier to strategic capability partner for global aerospace and defence companies. As India expands its role in global supply chains, we aim to help shape what the country can build and deliver to the world.”
The numbers frame that ambition: GAIPL’s aerospace business generates roughly US$20 million in annual revenue today, and the company is targeting 50% year-on-year growth over the next three to five years. At planned capacity, the Hoskote facility is expected to generate around US$50 million in annual revenue — with growth centred on higher-value programmes, deeper OEM partnerships and exports.
Watch: Gopalan Aerospace
The company’s own overview film captures the breadth of the Hoskote operations — from heavy engineering and precision machining to composites and unmanned systems.
Made in India, at industrial scale
A new production line, a twenty-fold production ambition, international partnerships and a pipeline of indigenous unmanned systems: GAIPL’s Hoskote expansion is one more signal that India’s private aerospace sector is moving from promise to production volume. The factory floor is ready — and the next twelve months will show the world what it can build.
