RAKSHA ANIRVEDA
INTERVIEW: START-UP FOCUS
‘BBB’s COLLABORATION WITH UNIVERSITIES TO REDUCE COST, LEAD TIME IN RESEARCH AND A LASER FOCUS ON DEFENCE PAVES WAY TO WIN MULTIPLE PROJECTS’
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ig Bang Boom Solutions (BBBS) is one of the youngest startups in defence based in Chennai, Tamil Nadu. A deep-tech defence solutions integrator, the company has allied interests in manufacturing and development of indigenous technologies. BBBS was founded in 2018 by Dr. R. Shivaraman, Co-Founder and CTO and Praveen Dwarakanath, Co-Founder and CEO. BBBS won two iDex challenges hosted by the Defence Innovation Organization (DIO) and also won several prestigious awards for its technology development. It has also entered into a co-development partnership with the Accord Aerospace and Defence (now Jasan Infra Pvt Ltd), and is co-developing a Personal Safety Drone along with a Security On-Demand logistics solutions for the Indian market. In an interview to Raksha Anirveda Editor Ajit K Thakur, BBB Solutions’ Dr R Shivaraman delves into the details of the company’s extraordinary achievement in the short span of two years. Edited excerpts:
Big Bang Boom has won the iDEX Defence India start-up challenge twice. What innovative solutions on indigenous technology development BBB presented that led to its winning streak? Kindly elaborate. It is a well-known fact that India is the second largest arms importer in the world and only in the last few years we have realised that our adversaries are increasingly harnessing new technologies. In order to realise our dream of becoming a self-sufficient nation in the defence sector, we must minimise our dependency on defence imports, and the key to reducing this “Defence Deficit” is Indigenous Technology Development and IP Ownership, the bread and butter of Big Bang Boom Solutions. Our success can be directly attributed to the fact that we are a lean company, and we specialise in frugal, deep tech innovations. Coming from an academic background, our team works aggressively with a number of Universities to reduce the cost, lead time in research while enabling us remain technology agnostic. This along with financial prudence, a solution architecture approach and a laser focus on defence allowed us to 88
win multiple projects, and we hope to continue the same. Our approach and ethos are best captured as “Big Bang Boom is the Flipkart of Defence Innovation.”- a statement made by a member of Evaluation Committee, which monitors the progress of our projects.
What are the on-going projects you are working on for the Indian Armed Forces? How has been the progress so far and by when your products or services solutions will be ready for market launch?
We typically take up projects directly for the armed forces, but in some case we work on adhoc projects that have defence use cases. Our defence ministry funded projects include the flagship See through Armour and the Anti-Drone Defence System which aim at providing a highly dependable and globally acceptable military grade tech solution. Apart from this, we are also working on a number of projects such as new generation body armour, autonomous drones and healthcare solutions for use by the armed forces which are funded by internal resources. All the projects are on track and we are confident of meeting the promised product delivery schedules despite delays due to COVID. The trials for the aforementioned products are expected in the first half of 2021 and we are already in talks with several potential buyers in both India and Abroad.
BBB is a deep-tech defence solutions integrator, and has interests in manufacturing and development of indigenous technologies. Tell us about your first successful development partnership
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