Godrej & Boyce's journey from locks and safes to rockets and missiles

An industrial house bred in the old-school manufacturing values of the Mumbai club, Godrej & Boyce has displayed unusual agility to become a trusted builder of advanced weaponry

Driving along Mumbai’s Eastern Express Highway towards Nashik, through the grime and bustle of a teeming megapolis, we turn off the road at Vikhroli into a startling haven of greenery. This is Godrej & Boyce’s 3,000-acre facility, which is touted as “Mumbai’s second lung”, the first being the Sanjay Gandhi National Park. The campus includes 1,400 acres of mangroves — India’s largest privately owned mangrove forest, we learn — which is conserved, with typical Godrej meticulousness, according to ISO 14001 standards.

This is an industrial house bred in the old-school manufacturing values of the Mumbai club, but which has displayed