L&T Delivers Samarthak, the Indian Navy's First Indigenous Multi-Purpose Vessel

Larsen & Toubro handed over Samarthak to the Indian Navy on August 27, 2026, at its Kattupalli shipyard near Chennai — the first of two indigenously designed and built Multi-Purpose Vessels ordered under a 2022 contract, and a new kind of platform for a Navy that has spent the past decade building warships but rarely a ship whose only job is to help build the next generation of them.

A Ship Built to Test Other Ships' Weapons

Samarthak's role sets it apart from the frigates, corvettes and submarines that dominate Indian Navy commissioning ceremonies. It is a trial and evaluation platform: a floating range designed to tow targets, launch and recover uncrewed surface and underwater vehicles, and support the gunnery and anti-submarine warfare drills that new indigenous weapons and sensors must clear before they reach a frontline warship. The Navy will also use it for maritime surveillance and offshore patrol, and — thanks to a limited hospital-ship capability — for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief when needed, including logistics runs to India's island territories.

That utility role explains why the vessel matters more than its size suggests. As India's DRDO and private defence firms push naval weapons and sensors from prototype to fleet-ready hardware faster than before — Bharat Dynamics' anti-submarine decoys, the wave of indigenous sonars and radars entering service, autonomous surface vessels from startups such as Sagar Defence — the Navy has needed a dedicated platform to put that hardware through its paces without tying up an operational warship. Samarthak is built to be exactly that, on call rather than on deployment.

The Numbers

The vessel displaces more than 3,750 tonnes, runs 107 metres long and 18.6 metres wide, and can make 15 knots. More than 75 percent of its content is indigenous, spanning hull, machinery and much of the mission equipment built into a ship designed from the outset for the Navy's testing needs rather than adapted from an existing hull. L&T built Samarthak under an ₹887 crore "Buy (Indian)" contract signed with the Ministry of Defence on March 25, 2022 — a category reserved for platforms designed, developed and manufactured domestically by an Indian vendor, as opposed to licensed or imported builds.

The ship was launched at Kattupalli on October 14, 2024, in a ceremony where Shashi Tripathi, President of the Navy Wives Welfare Association, performed the traditional launch, with then-Chief of Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh K. Tripathi presiding. Its name — Samarthak, meaning "supporter" or "enabler" — was chosen to reflect the multi-dimensional support role the class is meant to play across the fleet. A second vessel, INS Utkarsh, was launched roughly three months later and is following the same build track toward delivery.

Part of a Broader Shipyard Push

Samarthak's delivery lands amid a run of L&T Kattupalli deliveries to the Navy and Coast Guard: the yard has built Vikram-class offshore patrol vessels, is constructing Krishna-class cadet training ships, and has separately delivered survey vessels such as INS Nirdeshak under the broader push to source India's naval auxiliary fleet domestically rather than through foreign yards. Private shipbuilders taking on auxiliary and support vessels — rather than only warships — has become one of the quieter threads of the Navy's Aatmanirbhar Bharat push, freeing state-run yards like Mazagon Dock and Garden Reach to focus on combatants while companies such as L&T absorb the growing demand for testing, training and logistics platforms.

For the Navy, Samarthak's real value will show up gradually, as the weapons and sensors now moving through India's defence-industrial pipeline get tested against it rather than against a warship pulled off patrol duty — the unglamorous infrastructure that determines how quickly indigenous hardware actually reaches the fleet.

Sources

• Indian Navy Receives First Indigenous Multi-Purpose Vessel 'Samarthak' - Marine Insight
• Indian Navy takes delivery of first indigenous multi-purpose vessel - Naval Technology
• Samarthak – The First Indigenous Multi-Purpose Vessel Of Indian Navy - InsightsOnIndia
• Indian Navy Takes Delivery of Samarthak - idrw.org
• Launch of 'Samarthak', First Ship of Multi Purpose Vessel (L&T) Project - PIB
• Samarthak-class Multi Purpose Vessel - Wikipedia