Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders
From Dry Dock Repairs to Building Submarines That Stalk the Deep
THE MOMENT
December 2017. Mumbai harbour. INS Kalvari slips beneath the surface on its first operational dive as a commissioned warship of the Indian Navy. It has taken twelve years since the Project 75 contract was signed — and twenty-three years since India last commissioned a submarine — to reach this moment. Below the waterline, in the Kalvari's pressure hull, are systems that were once only made in France. Around them are welds laid by Indian workers in Mumbai, using techniques absorbed through years of working alongside Naval Group engineers.
Rear Admiral (retired) S.B. Jamgaonkar, who leads MDL's submarine programme, will later say: 'As a Shipbuilders to Nation and the only defence PSU to construct submarines in India, we are honoured.' The phrase carries weight. There is no other organisation in India that can build a submarine. That monopoly — earned through decades of technology absorption — is now India's strategic asset.
The Turnaround at a Glance
Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders
Timeline
1774
Mazagon Dock established in Mumbai — one of the oldest shipyards in Asia
1934
Taken over by Government of India; becomes a public sector enterprise
1984
Licensed manufacture of first Type 209/1500 submarines from Germany begins — technology transfer
1994
Second Type 209 delivered; submarine-building capability established in India for first time
2005
Project 75 contract signed: 6 Scorpène-class submarines to be built with French Naval Group ToT
2017
INS Kalvari commissioned — first Scorpène submarine; India back in submarine production after 20 years
Before → After
Submarines Built
Indigenous Content
Revenue
Active Orders
The Playbook Move
MOVE 7 — CONTROL THE VALUE CHAIN
Mazagon Dock moved from repairing ships to building submarines to integrating indigenous propulsion technology — each step giving India greater control over the most strategically sensitive segment of its naval value chain.
“As Shipbuilders to the Nation and the only defence PSU to construct submarines in India, we are committed to enhancing the operational capability of the Indian Navy's submarine fleet.”
— Cmde S.B. Jamgaonkar (Retd), Director Submarines, Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders
THE COMPANY BEFORE
Mazagon Dock was established in 1774 in Mumbai — one of the oldest surviving shipyards in Asia. For most of its history it was a commercial and naval shipyard: building cargo vessels, tankers, frigates, and destroyers. It overhauled and repaired ships for the Indian Navy and merchant fleet. This was valuable work, but it was service work — MDL was a contractor, executing designs provided by others.
The transition to submarine construction began in 1984, with the licensed manufacture of two Type 209/1500 submarines from HDW of Germany. This was pure licensed production — German engineers, German drawings, German technology. MDL provided the facility and the skilled labour. The second Type 209 was delivered in 1994. Then the programme ended. For the next decade, MDL had built submarines but not learned to design them.
THE CRISIS
By the late 1990s, India's submarine fleet was in critical decline. Ageing Soviet-era submarines were being decommissioned faster than replacements could be procured. The Navy's requirement for 24 conventional submarines by 2030 — stated in the 1999 plan — was already looking impossible to achieve. The gap between ambition and capability was enormous.
MDL's submarine-building skills, built through the Type 209 programme, were atrophying without active projects. Engineers who had been trained on submarine construction were moving into other roles or retiring. The institutional knowledge of submarine manufacturing is extraordinarily complex — pressure hull construction, systems integration, combat suite fitting, acoustic signature management — and it cannot be preserved in manuals. It lives in the people who do the work.
THE LEADERSHIP DECISION
Project 75, signed in October 2005, was India's most important industrial learning contract. The agreement with Naval Group of France for six Scorpène-class submarines was designed explicitly as a technology transfer — not just a procurement. MDL would build all six submarines in Mumbai, with French engineers progressively transferring knowledge to Indian counterparts.
The terms required French technical assistance for the first submarine, reducing progressively through the series. By INS Vagsheer, the sixth boat, Indian engineers were performing systems integration tasks that had required French supervision on INS Kalvari. Indigenous content rose from approximately 30% on the first submarine to 40% on the last. The trajectory pointed clearly toward an independent Indian submarine-building capability.
The second critical decision was embracing the P75I programme — six next-generation submarines with air-independent propulsion (AIP), advanced sensors, and BrahMos missile integration capability — rather than simply ordering more Scorpènes. P75I, even at higher cost and complexity, would push MDL and India's defence ecosystem to master capabilities that P75 had not required: AIP integration, advanced stealth measures, systems engineering for a platform designed in India rather than France.
THE STRATEGIC PIVOT
MDL's pivot was from shipyard-as-contractor to shipyard-as-system-integrator. The distinction is the same as in any complex manufacturing business: a contractor executes instructions. An integrator owns the architecture, manages the supply chain, coordinates hundreds of sub-system suppliers, and takes responsibility for the final platform's operational performance.
With each Scorpène submarine, MDL moved closer to the integrator role. The Jumboisation project — announced in 2024, in which existing Kalvari-class submarines will be precision-cut and an indigenous DRDO-developed AIP propulsion plug inserted — is the most technically demanding submarine modification project India has ever attempted. MDL is not just building submarines. It is now modifying them to integrate Indian technology that was not part of the original French design.
The P75I selection of ThyssenKrupp Marine Systems as partner (with MDL as the Indian manufacturer) brings Germany's Type 214 technology — including a fuel cell AIP system — to India. Each successive technology transfer brings MDL closer to the point where it can design a submarine independently, drawing on the accumulated knowledge of working with France, Germany, and DRDO.
MARKET REACTION
MDL's performance on Project 75 was not without controversy. Delivery timelines slipped significantly from the original schedule. The first Scorpène, planned for 2012, was commissioned in 2017. Each subsequent boat also ran late. The Indian Navy expressed frustration publicly, and the delays had real operational consequences for a fleet trying to maintain minimum submarine strength.
Yet the deliveries, when they came, were operationally successful. INS Kalvari and its sisters have performed their sea trials and combat system trials to the Indian Navy's satisfaction. The submarines have been commissioned and are conducting active patrols. And with P75I's CCS clearance in August 2025, the next chapter begins — a chapter in which MDL's accumulated expertise will be tested against a far more technically demanding platform.
THE FACTORY FLOOR
MDL's submarine manufacturing infrastructure is unique in India. The submarine building hall — a climate-controlled, security-cleared facility in Mumbai — can accommodate multiple submarines at different stages of construction simultaneously. The hull fabrication capability, developed through the Scorpène programme, involves high-strength steel welding under strict quality protocols that take years to certify.
The company has invested in automation, digital manufacturing records, and collaborative tools that allow MDL engineers to work alongside Naval Group counterparts on shared design platforms. The Industrial Design Centre, inaugurated in 2020, integrated R&D capability with manufacturing management. MDL's 2024 revenue was approximately ₹10,000 crore, with a multi-decade order book from submarine and surface warship programmes that guarantees its strategic importance to India's defence for generations.
THE RESULTS
THE PLAYBOOK MOVE
PLAYBOOK MOVE 7 — CONTROL THE VALUE CHAIN: Mazagon Dock moved from repairing ships to building submarines to integrating indigenous propulsion technology — each step giving India greater control over the most strategically sensitive segment of its naval value chain.
THE LESSON
The Technology Absorption Doctrine
MDL's submarine journey is the clearest example of India's technology absorption doctrine in action: accept a foreign design under a technology transfer agreement, build the first unit under supervision, progressively own more of the second, third, and fourth, and arrive at the final unit with the capability to do it yourself. This doctrine does not produce the fastest results. It does not produce the cheapest submarines. But it produces something more valuable than either: the irreplaceable institutional knowledge to build the next generation independently.
You are manufacturing a product under someone else's licence. How many more production cycles would it take before you could design it yourself — and what is the strategic value of that capability to your organisation?