Raymond names ex-BEL chief Bhanu Prakash Srivastava as defence business CEO

MUMBAI: Raymond is swapping boardroom pinstripes for battlefield hardware. On Monday the textile-to-real-estate conglomerate named Bhanu Prakash Srivastava, former chairman and managing director of Bharat Electronics Limited (BEL), as chief executive of its nascent defence business — a hire that signals just how serious the Singhania stable is about muscling into India’s booming arms sector.

Srivastava brings pedigree, not just a CV. A mechanical engineering graduate of IIT (BHU) Varanasi, he spent nearly four decades at BEL, where he left a mark that is hard to ignore: market capitalisation up from Rs 51,000 crore to Rs 1.5 lakh crore, over Rs 55,000 crore of fresh orders bagged, and more than 100 new products launched. Along the way he ran mission-critical programmes spanning radar, naval and sonar systems, missiles, electronic warfare and tactical communications — while also setting up AI incubation centres, the sort of detail that reads well in a LinkedIn post but matters rather more in a defence tender.

At Raymond, he will not merely oversee factories; he will write the playbook. The company says he will define strategic vision, operational roadmap and growth agenda as it pushes from precision manufacturing into higher-value defence electronics, software, systems integration — and, tellingly, adjacent aerospace and automotive technology too.

Gautam Hari Singhania, Raymond’s chairman and managing director, did not undersell the moment. India’s defence sector, he said, is entering “a defining phase of growth, innovation and self-reliance”, and Srivastava’s leadership made him “the ideal leader to spearhead Raymond’s defence journey”. Srivastava, for his part, called Raymond’s manufacturing legacy a strong platform to build from, and the opportunities in indigenous defence “unprecedented”.

Whether a company best known for suits can out-manoeuvre India’s defence-industrial old guard remains to be seen. But with a decorated insider now at the helm, Raymond has served notice: it wants a seat at the table where India’s next-generation weapons get built — and it isn’t asking politely.