This post takes me back to September 2003. I was one of hundred odd participants in the first edition of Vibrant Gujarat. Dr Shin was one of the participants. To me, he seemed like a practitioner of traditional chinese medicine. I then learned that he was a very famous personality from South Korea – and is widely credited with breaking Japanese monopoly in ship-building. And that all the famous technology companies from Korea like Hyundai and Samsung were originally shipbuilders.

I knew that India did not make large ships. There were a bunch of government shipyards like Mazagaon Docks in Mumbai and Garden Reach in Kolkata. In fact around 1992, I was leading a mandate from the then Disinvestment Commission to privatize Garden Reach. This was my first and last exposure to Indian shipbuilding. A real estate developer was very keen. APJ Abdul Kalam got to hear of the privatisation attempts and promptly got Indian Defence to take over the shipyard. And that is how some Defence ships started getting built in India. Dr Shin heard about the Indian shipyards with great interest. He had very specific questions “What size of sheet plate do they use?” I was surprised to hear that Korea in 2003 was able to make steel plates of 12m width and 20m length. That is the size of a six storeyed building. Imagine hauling that plate from the steel mill to the shipyard and then welding it into place.

Fast forward to 2022. I was part of a task force trying to figure out the missing pieces in the jigsaw. Could India be the new leader in shipbuilding ?? The words of Dr Shin of 2003 resonated. Finally, it is a ship. Should be a lot easier to build a ship than to build a 9 nm semiconductor chip. I spent two years visiting every single shipyard – operational or insolvent. My hunch was right. Here was a massive opportunity for India. L&T had already reported early success in shipbuilding at their yard near Chennai. But they were making midgets for defence – not very large crude carriers. None of the corporates seemed interested. It was just too much effort. There were easier options – sell overpriced electric buses to the already defunct state transport corporations – or sell solar power to the bankrupt distribution companies. All with heavy subsidies and incentives.

Then thanks to our Distinguished Fellow Commodore Bala, I got a quick refresher course in modern ship building. He introduced me to Kiran Jadhav of Kanhoji Shipyard who shared his enthusiasm to build the worlds largest electric VLCC. His company exports critical parts for the Boeing planes.

But how would we get off the ground ?? VLCC was a closely guarded technology. How can we build a research institute that could lead the world ? China would’nt part with anything. The others had lost relevance.

Dr Shin was already waiting for India. He had been studying India and its shipbuilding industry for 23 years. Luck is when opportunity meets preparedness.