Defence Procurement: A Practitioner’s Perspective – Ep 4 | Stop Chasing Senior Officers. Find the Right Door

In the first three episodes of Defence Procurement: A Practitioner’s Perspective, we have built a simple framework for companies trying to work with the Indian defence ecosystem.

Episode 1: There is no single customer called “the Army”. Different users, formations and organisations have different requirements — and the person who uses your product may not be the person who buys it.

Episode 2: The military does not simply buy technology. It buys operational effectiveness. The technology is valuable because of the operational effect it enables.

Episode 3: Even if your technology solves a genuine military problem, that does not automatically make it a priority. Military priorities are shaped by threats, operational experience, doctrine, concept of operations and available resources.

Now comes the next practical question:

If you have identified a real problem, developed a solution and established that the problem is important — whom do you actually approach?

That is the focus of Episode 4.

One of the most common mistakes companies make is concentrating on getting a meeting, rather than getting a meeting with the right organisation.The most senior officer is not necessarily the person who owns your problem. The organisation that owns the problem may not evaluate your technology. The organisation that evaluates it may not fund it, and the organisation that funds it may not ultimately procure it.There may also be stakeholders responsible for cybersecurity, communications, compatibility, training, maintenance and integration.

So the objective isn’t to collect appointments.It is to understand the journey your capability has to take through the system — and identify the people who can actually move it forward.

The key questions for industry are:

Whose problem am I solving?Who owns that problem?Who can act on it?Who controls the resources required to implement the solution?

Because in defence, the right door, the right conversation and the right outcome matter.