Air India, TASL to invest Rs 2,300 crore in Karnataka, sign MoU with state government

BENGALURU: The Karnataka government and Tata Group companies — Air India and Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) — signed a memorandum of understanding on Monday for an investment of Rs 2,300 crore, estimated to create about 1,650 direct employments.

The agreement was signed in the presence of Chief Minister Siddaramaiah and Large and Medium Industries Minister MB Patil at Vidhana Soudha. As per the MoU, Tata Group will set up various manufacturing and R&D facilities in the state.

S Selvakumar, Principal Secretary, Industries Department Nipun Agrawal, Chief Commercial Officer of Air India and Sukaran Singh, CEO of TASL exchanged the MoU.

Speaking on the occasion, Minister M B Patil said that Air India plans to establish an Airframe Maintenance Repair and Overhaul (MRO) facility at Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) with an investment plan of Rs 1,300 crore which is likely to employ 1,200 people.

This will be the first of its first-of-its-kind facility in India and is claimed to further open doors for full-scale MRO. Air India will also create an Aviation Hub at Bengaluru Airport thus increasing the economic activity and air traffic through Bengaluru, he added.

Further, Tata Advanced Systems Limited (TASL) has also planned for investment of about Rs 1,000 crore across three projects — aircraft conversion (passenger to freighter), gun manufacturing facility and research and development in the A&D sector. All these projects are the first of their kind in India and will be located at Bengaluru International Airport and Kolar and will further strengthen the A&D ecosystem of Karnataka.

Stating that such projects require streamlined support from the government in terms of clearances, approvals and interventions, Patil assured support in resolving any challenges about the grounding of the projects.

Chief Secretary Rajneesh Goyal, Additional Chief Secretary to Chief Minister L K Ateeq, Commissioner of Industries Department Gunjan Krishna, Air India top officials Manan Chauhan, Karthikeya Bhat, Atul Shukla, TASL top officials Guru Dattatreya, Arjun Maine, Bangalore International Airport Managing Director Hari Marar, COO Satyaki Raghunath, and CFO Bhaskar Ravindra were present.