An engineer who makes music and fighter parts too

The next time you step into a music store to buy an electronic sruthi box or a thalam instrument or a digital tanpura , with the brand Radel emblazoned on it, remember that it is the initiative of one who, hailing from a family of musicians, got fascinated by aeronautics as a child and wanted to be an aerospace engineer.

That is G Raj Narayan, who on graduating in electrical engineering from BMS, Bangalore, wanted to do a Master’s from the Indian Institute of Science, but was told by its then director Satish Dhawan that he did not qualify as he was not a rank holder. Raj Narayan recalls that he even took some of the aeroplane models he had made when he went to meet Dhawan for admission.

Seeing his enthusiasm, Dhawan suggested that Raj Narayan join the public sector Hindustan Aeronautics Ltd (HAL) as a management trainee, which is what he did. Raj Narayan was in HAL’s design department, but within 10 years he found it frustrating “because in those days you didn’t have too many projects and there wasn’t too much of an opportunity for innovation.” During his stint at HAL, Raj Narayan also obtained a Master’s in electronics from IIT-Madras. Frustrated by the lack of challenges, Raj Narayan did the inevitable. He quit his job in HAL in 1979, much to the chagrin of his engineer-father, who himself, says Raj Narayan, was a radical who had even worked in Germany under Hitler.

With his exposure to electronics and of integrated circuits and miniaturised high-reliability design Raj Narayan realised he had to branch out into a commercial consumer-oriented industry, since the Defence sector was closed for private enterprise.

He was a performing musician, having played the flute at the national level on radio, and had developed an electronic sruthi box. When he showed it to other musicians, they too evinced interest. Thus was born his first venture in 1979 — Radel Systems that later became Radel Electronics, which makes electronic Sruthi box, digital tanpura , digital tabla and thalam meter. “I never dreamt that I would have an industrial unit making electronic musical instruments as my bread and butter,” he recalled.

He says his initial investment in the company was about ₹10,000 and the business has grown without any external funding. It is this business that has also helped him branch out into making aircraft parts for the Defence sector.

The feedback and support he got from established musicians gave him the confidence that the venture would succeed. Thanks to his stint at HAL, he was exposed to working on transistors, integrated circuits and miniaturised designs, all of which he used in designing and making the digital musical instruments. He says all the products were designed in-house by him. He used to code the machines that went into the micro-processors. As the business grew, Radel started recruiting engineers and training them. But he soon ran into a problem.

The engineers, according to Raj Narayan, could not relate to the work they were doing as most of them did not have a background in music. Even though the instruments adopted embedded software design and applications, it did not appeal to engineers.

Thus he had to do something else to provide a challenging environment for the engineers and keep them engaged. Radel came up with security products, which unfortunately did not hit the market for various reasons.

Having introduced microprocessor-based musical instruments, Raj Narayan felt that the same embedded software, microprocessor digital technology could be used in any other industrial product, including in aerospace. Thus in 2004, when the Defence sector, particularly aerospace, was opened up to the private sector, he was ready to grab the opportunity. “I had worked on a variety of aircraft, as a designer, system integration, and I had done structural design too,” he says. Electronic design was his forte and he floated Radel Advanced Technology Pvt Ltd, to tap opportunities in the Defence sector. Both the companies share infrastructure in Bangalore’s Electronics City.

Making components for the Defence sector is a huge challenge, says Raj Narayan. Not because there is no capability. One, manufacturers are not willing to share technology. The Government’s attitude too does not help. Testing facilities are limited and prohibitively expensive in the private sector, while getting the parts tested in government laboratories takes a long time. Bank funding is just not available for conducting research.

Despite all these odds, Radel Advanced Technology managed to get an order from the Indian Air Force to develop a unit that fires rockets on the Jaguar aircraft. The parts were being repaired and re-used, but when it came to a point where they could no longer be used, the Air Force went in for indigenisation. The Air Force said the suppliers were free to adopt appropriate technology as long as functionality of the part was maintained. This is what Radel achieved. It is also working on a couple of other projects for the Defence sector.

“We have to reach out to these foreign companies. They say you are too small, we can’t deal with you directly,” says Raj Narayan, on the opportunities. While the Government wants the small and medium enterprises to get more business, the foreign manufacturers are not interested in transferring technology.

The offset clause, he says, is but a small stepping stone. Indian companies, especially the SME vendors, have to take a quantum jump in technological capability. There are a lot of SMEs with capability, but they have to be nurtured and banks should come forward to fund them .

Is there a synergy between the musical instruments business and the one in the Defence sector? Of course, adds 65-year-old Raj Narayan. “We use the same micro-controllers in both. The reliability issue that they get exposed to in Defence and aerospace, the same gets adopted in musical instruments. My musical instruments rarely fail,” he says. Together, the two businesses employ 75 people.

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