French MNC Thales Group to build avionics MRO in Gurgaon by March 2025

French aerospace, defence and cyber security major, Thales Group is setting up an avionics maintenance, repair, and operations (MRO) facility in Gurgaon by March next year. The multinational also plans to double the number of engineers based in India in two years to serve the increasing export demand in cyber security and aviation solutions.

“Thales is aiming to achieve certification for MRO by the end of the year, with operations expected to commence in the first quarter of 2025,” says Pascale Sourisse, Senior Executive Vice President, International Development, Thales and CEO Thales International. Thales says avionics MROs can be set up away from airports since they do not require access to the runway. The MRO will provide maintenance for avionics systems, which will be dismantled from the aircraft and brought to the MRO for corrective actions, the company says.The repaired equipment will be taken back to the aircraft and reinstalled, the company says.

“The proposed avionics MRO will offer a range of services, leveraging Thales's extensive and recognised expertise in providing, maintaining, and upgrading avionics systems. These services will be crucial in supporting Indian airlines, including Air India, IndiGo, among others, ensuring the efficient operation and maintenance of avionics in their aircraft,” Pascale adds.

“Thales is investing multi-million Euros in a Maintenance, Repair, and Operations (MRO) set-up in Gurgaon, India, to provide world-class service efficiency to its airline customers,” Pascale says.

The company plans to increasingly use India as a base to serve global markets in the cybersecurity and aviation market as it expects the global demand in the segment to grow.

“For avionics and cybersecurity, the vast majority of activities in India are targeted at the global market. We have cybersecurity packages, the hardware security module, financial transactions technology and data security solutions in the cloud. We expect market demand to be very significantly growing and we expect our people in India to play a very critical role,” Pascale says.