Firms eye opportunities as Sitharaman talks up defence industrial corridor

More than half of her 23-minute talk at an industry gathering in Delhi on Monday was devoted to assuring support to private firms

With the Budget announcing a Chennai-Bengaluru defence industrial corridor, firms in the Coimbatore industrial hub are gearing up for potentially lucrative opportunities in the defence manufacturing sector.
 
On Monday, in New Delhi, Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman pledged her ministry’s support to the “defence production corridor”. She said the stretch from Chennai to Bengaluru, passing through Trichy, Coimbatore, Salem and Hosur, housed a sprawl of ordnance factories and defence public sector units, ready buyers for what small and medium industries in the corridor would produce.
 
Hoping to benefit are engineering firms such as the Coimbatore-based Shanthi Gears from the