Svaya and NewSpace Push Indigenous Defense Robots and Autonomous Swarms

Two Indian companies are building the legged robots, exoskeletons and autonomous swarms that the armed forces currently import, in a defence-robotics localisation push backed by DRDO funding. The work targets capabilities that are expensive, strategically sensitive, and until now sourced almost entirely from abroad.

Svaya: quadrupeds and exoskeletons as import substitution

Svaya Robotics, based in Hyderabad and working with DRDO laboratories, has developed what it describes as India's first indigenous quadruped robot, a four-legged platform rated for a 25 kg payload and built for reconnaissance and inspection in unstructured terrain. Legged robots earn their cost where wheels and tracks fail: rubble, stairs, trenches and broken ground where a soldier would otherwise have to go. Svaya has also built a soldier exoskeleton tailored to Indian anthropometry, a detail that matters because exoskeletons must fit the body frames of the soldiers wearing them, and imported units are sized for other populations.

The thesis is import substitution. These systems are currently bought from suppliers in the United States and Switzerland, so a domestic alternative addresses both cost and the strategic vulnerability of depending on foreign vendors for frontline equipment. Anthropometric tailoring is, in effect, a localisation moat: a fit-for-purpose Indian system that an off-the-shelf import cannot match.

NewSpace: stealth drones and operational swarms

NewSpace Research & Technologies, based in Bengaluru, is supplying the Indian Navy's AI-enabled stealth drone designated 'Abhimanyu', and previously delivered the Army's first 100-UAV swarm, a demonstrated, fielded capability rather than a prototype. Coordinating 100 airframes is a hard autonomy and communications problem, and having done it at scale is a meaningful barrier to entry.

Both companies sit in the high-barrier territory of manned-unmanned teaming and autonomous swarms, multi-service capabilities aligned with DRDO's Make-in-India funding through vehicles such as the Technology Development Fund. The caveat is the customer: defence-robotics revenue depends on procurement cycles and programme funding, and some figures around these private firms remain unverified. The capability is real; the order flow that monetises it is the variable to watch.