Mr. Jayant Damodar Patil
MTech, 1978, Mechanical Engineering

Mr. Jayant Damodar Patil is the Director and Senior Executive Vice President (Defence Business), Larsen and Toubro Limited (LandT). He obtained his MTech degree in Mechanical Engineering from IIT Bombay in 1978 and BE degree from the Nagpur University in 1976.

Mr. Patil has a rich nearly four-decade long career in LandT, and has been instrumental in developing the nascent Technology and Product Development Group of LandT’s corporate RandD with a focus on top-end inter-disciplinary Product Development. During the first decade of his career, Mr. Patil was a member of a core team that designed and developed super heavy rotating industrial machinery systems for cement, chemical, fertilizer and mineral processing plants.

He led Larson and Toubro’s foray across segments of the Defence sector. Under his leadership, the team developed a basket of technologies and new products, thereby building an enviable track record in Defence Systems for LandT. His pioneering contributions have been in the domains of system architecture, configuration design and interdisciplinary product development for across the range Weapon and Engineering systems for DRDO programs. He spearheaded the Industrial Product and Technology Development Centre involving building and nurturing an in-house technical and scientific manpower pool, overseeing Prototype Development Centre at Mumbai and Bengaluru.

In the Defence sector, under his able leadership, the company created nine new units for Defence RandD/ design/ production. These include Technology Centres for Weapon Systems, Defence Equipment, Military Communication and Sensors as well as Submarine Design Centre and Warship Design Centre. He spearheaded the creation of new Defence Production Centers at Talegaon (for Weapon systems and Engineering Systems), Coimbatore (Precision Manufacturing of Missile Airframes), Visakhapatnam (Naval underwater platforms) and Katupalli (Surface Ships), besides specific work center at LandT’s Baroda unit for production of Advanced Composites. All these serve the nation and significantly contribute to Make-in-India with indigenous content spanning 65 to 98% across the range of 40-50 systems under concurrent serial production.

Given his deep involvement in defence systems, Mr. Patil has been a member of numerous review committees for range of Defence Research and Development Organization (DRDO) projects across weapon systems and engineering systems programs. He has been a core group member of Defence and Aerospace Committees of Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) and Confederation of Indian Industry (ClI) since 1998 and has led the Industry chambers to advocate policy change by the Government of India to facilitate R&D and encourage the growth of a Defence Industrial Base in the country. He has been appointed as the Chairman of FICCI National Committee on Defence and Aerospace and invited for debate by the Ministry of Defence on all policy initiatives as well as by PMO for the biannual review of Defence Industry liberalization.

Mr. Patil has been involved in the aerospace sector as manufacturing partner industry of Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) for serial production of solid rocket motors besides a host of other hardware such as payload heat shields, solar array deployment devices, tankages etc. He was involved in the production of the PSLV hardware since the mid 80’s.

Mr. Patil was member of 12th Plan Group of the MoD for defence production as also for Defence Aerospace Production in 2012.

He was a member of the 12th Plan review committee for ISRO in 2012. He was also a member of the Composite Implementation Team for Production (Scale up) of PSLV by Industry Consortium in 2016. He has been awarded Honorary Fellowship by Project Management Associates (The National Association of Project Managers) and Fellowship by INAE (Indian National Academy of Engineering)


Special Memories

"The environment in the hostels presented a very different perspective for someone like me who had been a day scholar during his B.E. days. Having being chosen as Director's student after the first semester at IIT, I could have the freedom and unhindered access to the learning resources available at IIT Bombay. The Institute provided an opportunity for experiential learning and helped me build a strong foundation for my career ahead".