OPED By Divya Malhotra
India is no longer satisfied with being a land power with a long coastline. In the rapidly evolving Indo-Pacific, full of rising rivalries and competition for critical sea routes, India is quietly but firmly stepping up to become a serious maritime player.
In recognition of this, the Government of India’s Maritime India Vision (MIV) 2030 lays out an unprecedented plan with more than 150 initiatives to modernise ports, shipping, inland waterways, coastal infrastructure, and logistics networks: aiming to integrate economic, security, and connectivity objectives into India’s broader Indo-Pacific footprint.
India’s maritime push is not only about hardware and platforms, but also about domain awareness, indigenous technology, and institutional depth; a point echoed by Rear Admiral Monty Khanna (Retd), who has long stressed that “the maritime domain is ubiquitous, … part of the global commons … and this is one of the important domains in which great-power competition is playing out.”
For India, this maritime turn is not just about trade or global ambition; it is also about strategic necessity.
Confronted with an enduring two-front challenge on land: a hostile Pakistan to the west and an increasingly assertive China to the north and east, India requires a long-term maritime vision to generate strategic depth beyond the subcontinent.
Sea power offers India the space that continental geography constrains: enabling deterrence, sustained presence, supply-chain security, and crisis response across the Indian Ocean. In this sense, maritime capability is not a peripheral complement to land power, but an essential pillar of India’s national security architecture.
From Vision to Infrastructure
In this ecosystem of grand vision and national ambition, it is essential to look beyond the headlines and examine the mid-tier technology players; firms that operate in the space between large shipyards, major ports, and defence PSUs.
These firms provide the enabling infrastructure: marine sensors, underwater-domain awareness systems, dredging technologies, hydrographic survey equipment, jetty-monitoring tools, oceanographic systems, and harbour-security technologies.
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While they seldom attract national attention, they constitute the “technology component” that allows India’s maritime strategy to function.
India’s 11098.8 km coastline hosts 12 major ports and more than 200 non-major ports. According to the Ministry of Ports, Shipping, and Waterways data, traffic at major ports increased to 885 million tonnes in 2024, reflecting both infrastructure expansion and operational reforms.
The Maritime India Vision 2030 underscores the need for world-class port infrastructure: deeper drafts, intelligent berths, efficient jetties, green ports, digitisation, and integrated logistics systems, to support India’s rising trade and security responsibilities.
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Why does this matter? Ports serve as junctions for sea logistics, naval operations, economic corridors, and coastal security. A port’s resilience: breakwaters, dredging cycles, bathymetry, harbour awareness, and environmental monitoring, is inseparable from India’s maritime capability.
The Indo-Pacific era demands reliability and redundancy, and India’s maritime infrastructure is being increasingly framed through this strategic lens.
Factoring in Technology & Innovation
Beyond big shipyards and port authorities, India’s maritime capability increasingly depends on an expanding innovation ecosystem that provides an essential technological layer, from sensors and seabed mapping to autonomous systems and coastal awareness tools.
India’s post-2014 maritime ecosystem has witnessed a quiet but notable rise of homegrown start-ups that are filling critical technological gaps in port modernisation, underwater systems, maritime robotics, and coastal security.
These technologies support safer navigation, environmental monitoring, and effective waterfront operations, and they reflect an emerging cohort of Indian engineering talent now working alongside public programmes and global technology partners.
‘Make in India’ Meets the Sea
The Government of India has repeatedly highlighted indigenisation in maritime and naval systems. The Indian Navy’s push for self-reliance in sensors, weapons, and platforms complements the civilian maritime infrastructure agenda.
MIV 2030 emphasizes technology adoption, smart ports, digital monitoring systems, and local innovation.
For mid-tier firms, this translates into actionable opportunities. Port expansion projects increasingly seek Indian-origin sensor systems for scour monitoring, hydrographic mapping, environmental compliance, and jetty operations.
Dredging contracts now prioritise domestic equipment and service providers to meet localization metrics. Harbour security systems, coastal monitoring radars, underwater sensors, and intrusion-detection systems align with both civil and defence imperatives.
Underwater Domain Awareness (UDA) technologies are now dual-use; ports require seabed integrity mapping, sediment tracking, pipeline monitoring, and underwater acoustics, not just the Navy.
Industry practitioners point out that India’s maritime tech ecosystem cannot thrive through hardware alone; it requires sustained calibration between innovation, regulatory frameworks, and integration with port and naval operations.
A recent survey of India’s maritime start-up ecosystem indicates approximately 122 enterprises working on robotics, underwater sensors, data platforms, and logistics tools, signalling that India’s maritime modernisation rests on an increasingly diverse technology base.
During a personal interaction with the author, Vivek Bansal, a pioneer in the field of maritime solutions and CEO of Spry Technocon, stated that “Maritime infrastructure is not just concrete and steel. It is information.
Whether a port deepens its draft or builds a breakwater, you need real-time seabed intelligence, sediment monitoring, and environmental data. Our job is to ensure ports have this awareness.” In this sense, such start-ups and emerging technology partners act as force multipliers, converting national vision into capability by rapidly bridging the gaps between policy intent, operational needs, and on-the-ground maritime realities.
Beyond individual innovators, institutional frameworks are evolving to support India’s maritime tech ecosystem.
As Union Minister Sarbananda Sonowal highlighted at the launch of India’s first sector-specific maritime finance company in June this year, “SMFCL (Sagar Mala Finance Corporation Limited) will bridge crucial financing gaps and offer sector-specific financial solutions, empowering ports, MSMEs, startups, and institutions.
It has fulfilled a long-standing demand of the maritime industry and aligns with our Maritime Amrit Kaal Vision 2047.”
Strategic Considerations
A few strategic caveats remain important. The scale of India’s maritime infrastructure expansion is vast. Conversion of vision into delivered capability takes years of capital investment, regulatory alignment, and technological maturation: an issue explicitly acknowledged in MIV 2030. Localisation faces global competition.
Advanced underwater-acoustic arrays, high-end bathymetric sonars, and dredging technologies are still dominated by foreign OEMs. Indian firms must move from system integration and distribution to indigenous design, R&D, and calibration.
Maritime-tech firms must integrate with multiple regulators and agencies: port authorities, environmental bodies, customs systems, coastal zone authorities, smart-port digital platforms, and defence-linked UDA networks.
This coordination is complex but essential. Finally, underwater-domain awareness is becoming a decisive strategic frontier. As India’s naval modernisation accelerates, the same logic must extend into port-infrastructure sensors, seabed monitoring, and civilian-maritime UDA systems.
Two observations warrant attention. First, logistics and maritime infrastructure directly translate into strategic depth. Ports are not passive economic assets; they are strategic nodes that sustain force projection, enable trade resilience, and support missions ranging from HADR (Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief) to sustained naval deployments across the Indian Ocean.
India’s naval ambitions, therefore, rest as much on resilient port capacity and hinterland connectivity as on frontline platforms. Second, India’s maritime infrastructure is increasingly dependent on indigenous technological capability: from underwater monitoring and harbour security to coastal resilience and domain awareness.
Conclusion
Slogans alone do not create capability. If India is to emerge as a credible maritime power, these less-visible layers of sensors, data networks, and subsea awareness must be strengthened with the same strategic priority as warship construction.
India’s maritime strength will be measured not only by platforms but also by the underlying infrastructure that enables safe navigation, resilient logistics, and real-time awareness across ports and coastal domains.
Indigenous innovation from sensor systems to autonomous data tools, from seabed mapping to environmental monitoring, is central to this architecture. As India looks to anchor its role in the Indian Ocean and beyond, these quietly evolving capabilities will matter as much as the more visible hardware.
Divya Malhotra is a senior fellow with the Centre for New Age Warfare Studies (CNAWS) and has served on the National Security Advisory Board as a researcher.
