India Must Now Prove It Can Build Ships "Again and Again," Says Miniratna DPSU HSL's Chief

India has shown it can build ships, but the harder test is building them repeatedly, on time and at a competitive cost, the head of Hindustan Shipyard Limited (HSL) told an industry gathering in Mumbai on Tuesday.

Rear Admiral C. Raghuram, VSM (Retd.), HSL’s Chairman and Managing Director, made the remarks at INMARCO 2026, organised by the Institute of Marine Engineers (India) at The Westin Mumbai Powai Lake. He was speaking on the panel “Shipyards and Newbuilds: Maritime Landscape 2030.” HSL is a Partner of the conference.

“A yard that can take a 43,000 tonne ship from steel to water in eighteen months is no longer proving that it can build,” he told an audience of regulators, class societies, equipment makers, owners and yards. “It is being asked whether it can build again, and again, on time and at a competitive cost.”

Closing the cost gap

Raghuram outlined three shifts he believes Indian shipbuilding must make. The first is moving from building individual ships to running a production system. “A first ship is a prototype. The fifth ship is a product,” he said.

The Shipyards Association of India estimates that Indian yards face a cost gap of about 24% against East Asian competitors. Government incentives can help, Raghuram said, but not fully: “Incentives can narrow it. Only series can close it.”

A seat at the rule-making table

The second shift is from following the rule book to helping write it. “India should want a seat at that table, as a place where first-of-kind ships are designed, approved and built,” he said. He suggested starting with green tugs, developed jointly by the port, the yard, the classification society, the Directorate and battery makers.

A “digital birth certificate”

The third shift concerns what a ship carries when it leaves the yard. “Every ship should leave an Indian yard with two things: her steel, and her digital birth certificate,” Raghuram said. He described a single record, including the hazardous materials inventory required under the Hong Kong Convention, that would serve the surveyor, owner, repair yard and recycler for 30 years.

He proposed that the India Ship Technology Centre help MSMEs, design firms and yards build such a shared digital record, and said HSL is ready to take part.

Recent milestones

Raghuram spoke weeks after a busy stretch at HSL’s Visakhapatnam yard. On 6 October, the yard launched Surya, the first of five Fleet Support Ships for the Indian Navy. The 43,500-tonne vessel is classed by the Indian Register of Shipping and is targeted to have over 80% indigenous content. The same day, HSL laid the keel of the fifth ship in the series and opened an extended Slipway-4 with a 300-tonne Goliath crane, built for ships of up to 45,000 DWT. In August, the yard delivered INS Nipun, the second indigenous Diving Support Vessel.

He also cited three tests that Defence Minister (Raksha Mantri) set for Indian yards at HSL on 6 October: design we own, delivery on time, and productivity we can measure.

Asks of government and industry

Raghuram welcomed recent policy support, including a demand outlook of about 437 vessels over ten years, infrastructure status for Indian-built ships, a ₹69,725 crore package, a ₹25,000 crore Maritime Development Fund, and a target of 4.5 million GT of annual capacity.

He asked for clearer delivery timetables to be shared with yards, a stronger voice for Indian designers in rule-making, and long-term finance and local service support from equipment makers and financiers.

Every shipbuilding job creates about six more, he noted, and the package could generate close to thirty lakh jobs. “Launching one ship is a ceremony,” he said. “Delivering the fifth on time is an industry. And delivering the hundredth, year after year, is a nation’s shipbuilding.”

Extending HSL’s motto to the sector as a whole, he closed with, “One industry, one mission, powering India’s maritime destiny.”

The session was moderated by Ankur Anal, Junior Ship Surveyor-cum-ADG (Tech) at the Directorate General of Maritime Administration. Other panellists were Capt. P. Sunil Kumar of GRSE, Sujith Tooneri of Lloyd’s Register, Rajeev Nayyer of Swan Defence and Heavy Industries and a former president of IME(I), and Cdr. Samuel Ranji of First Marine International (Royal HaskoningDHV).

HSL, based in Visakhapatnam, is a Miniratna Category-I public sector undertaking under the Ministry of Defence.