“Our company has been one of the biggest proponents of ‘Make in India”

SLN Technologies is an electronic system design and manufacturing (ESDM) company, which was established in 1995. The company started as an equipment and service provider to the Indian PCB industry and, subsequently, started R&D and manufacturing services for the aerospace and defence industry in 1997

By Belal Khan

Anil Kumar Muniswamy is one of the two founding directors, the current MD and the driving force behind SLN Technologies Pvt Ltd, a Bengaluru based embedded systems design and manufacturing company.

He started SLN Technologies, along with his engineering college classmate D.R. Subramanyam, in 1995, with the vision of building a world class technology company in India. With the help of a good partner and a team of highly dedicated engineers, he has led the company towards translating this vision into reality.

Success story
The success of a company is often due to its capacity to innovate and invest in R&D. SLN has the passion to take up challenging projects and complete them well before the deadline. Its risk-taking capacity, combined with innovative R&D practices and the encouragement that it has received from Indian defence PSUs, has propelled the company to the level it has reached.
Today, SLN Technologies is one of the fastest growing aerospace and defence companies in India, and its major products and services include design and development of embedded systems for avionics, electronics manufacturing services, systems integration of rugged systems for aerospace and military applications, as well as providing turnkey solutions to PCB manufacturing and electronic systems manufacturing industries.

The company has grown at an average rate of 45 per cent, year on year, since its inception. The present staff strength of the company is about 120, of which 90 are hardware and software engineers.

The flagship products of SLN Technologies include the black box for the Sukoi 30 fighter aircraft, control systems for the Chandrayaan-1 programme, single board computers for nuclear reactors, radar control systems for the Indian Army, automatic testing equipment for avionics subsystems, control systems for VSAT and earth station antennae for satellite communication.
“We started developing systems for VSAT applications for ECIL, and an antenna control system was our first product which was indigenously designed and manufactured in India. SLN started taking on many projects for re-engineering and reverse engineering from defence customers to address the issue of obsolescence of systems. Later, the trade embargo on Indian defence organisations became a boon for SLN, as it paved the way for the indigenisation of defence equipment. The strength of SLN lies in innovation and R&D,” says Muniswamy.

Products manufactured at the facility
SLN has specialised in the design, development, integration, testing, qualification and manufacture of electronic systems for avionics line-replaceable units (LRUs), automated test equipment, software integration rigs, ground support equipment (‘I’, ‘O’ level testers), radar and satcom antenna control systems, electronic modules and other custom-built electronics systems. SLN has been catering to the aerospace, defence and nuclear industries for the past two decades.

Manufacturing capacity
SLN has a capacity to manufacture about ₹ 700 million to ₹ 1 billion worth of defence equipment and it has tie-ups with some partners for the assembly of PCBs. The company is building its own manufacturing plant in the Jigani industrial area in Bengaluru, with an investment of ₹ 200 million. Once the facility is ready in 2017, the manufacturing capacity of the company will increase, with an expected turnover of ₹ 2 billion per annum.

A focus on quality
SLN’s in-house R&D unit has been recognised by the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research (DSIR), government of India. SLN has a separate R&D team headed by a senior DGM, and a testing and quality lab headed by a DGM. All the environmental tests and EMI/EMC tests are done at its business partners’ premises. Some of the test facilities are listed below, along with other manufacturing equipment.

Major equipment
“We use the state-of-art SMT manufacturing facility of our partner companies for assembly and testing of PCB assemblies. The total assembly and integration of the equipment is done in-house,” says Muniswamy.

• Digital storage oscilloscopes
• Rework stations
• Digital microscopes
• Automated test equipment
• Custom testing equipment
• Boundary scan tools for testing
• CAD/CAM tools
• IBM testing tools
• Mentor Graphics
• Cadence design tools
• Programmable power supplies
• Wiring harness equipment
• Solid Works

“Our company has been one of the biggest proponents of the ‘Make in India’ programme. Some of the initiatives of DeitY and the government of India, such as MSIPS and the electronics development fund, which are designed to help make in India, are further fuelling the growth of our company.

Anil Kumar Muniswamy, managing director, SLN Technologies