The India aerospace Q1 FY27 numbers are in. Unimech, Aequs, Rossell Techsys and MTAR all reported within ten days of each other. Three made money. One lost ₹53 crore. The gap between them is worth understanding.
In June, Unimech signed a long-term supply deal with FACC of Austria. The contract covers flying parts, and Unimech beat global competition to win it.
That word “flying” is doing a lot of work. Tooling and ground equipment support an aircraft. Flying parts go on it, which means airworthiness approvals, full traceability, and a qualification process that runs for years before anyone gets paid.
Four Indian precision manufacturers reported the June quarter in the last two weeks. Every one of them grew revenue between 55% and 130%. One still posted a loss.
| Company | Revenue Q1 FY27 | YoY | Profit | Order book |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Aequs | ₹395.6 cr | +55% | −₹53.2 cr | Aerospace above USD 1 bn |
| MTAR | ₹360.7 cr | +130% | ₹50.2 cr | ₹5,143 cr |
| Rossell Techsys | ₹154.7 cr | +78% | ₹6.98 cr | ₹800 cr |
| Unimech | ₹107.6 cr | +71% | ₹27.9 cr | ₹280 cr |
Unimech had its best quarter yet. Beyond the FACC win, the board cleared a ₹750 crore fundraise and the company set up a machining plant in Dammam with the Kanoo group of Saudi Arabia. Small order book, but the mix is shifting upward.
Aequs grew fastest in rupee terms and still lost money. Its aerospace order book crossed USD 1 billion, it added two new Tier-1 customers, and it won its first contract to build complete A320 wheels for Safran, made entirely in India. The loss came from depreciation and interest on new plants, plus a consumer electronics business bleeding ₹36 crore at the EBITDA line. Aerospace plants in India ran at 78% utilisation last quarter. Consumer ran at 22%.
Rossell Techsys had the tidiest quarter. Revenue up 78%, margins up 200 basis points, ₹240 crore of fresh orders booked and ₹350 crore of bids submitted. Its US arm picked up a letter of intent from an international defence firm. It also cleared qualification with a global semiconductor customer, with revenue starting this quarter.
MTAR posted the biggest jump, though nuclear and fuel cells still pay its bills. The aerospace story is what to watch. It has qualified first articles for Thales and GKN, and it is building the main landing gear support structure for the AMCA fighter programme. Management expects aerospace and defence revenue to double this year.
Why all four grew at once
This is a global shortage showing up on Indian books.
At the start of 2026, airlines were waiting on over 17,000 undelivered aircraft. At current build rates that backlog takes more than twelve years to clear. Somebody has to make the wheels, doors and harnesses.
India has been picking up that work steadily. Airbus now buys more than USD 1.5 billion a year from India, up from around USD 500 million in 2019, and wants to reach USD 2 billion. Boeing buys over USD 1.3 billion. Every A220 door in the world is now built in India by a private company.
Policy helped in February, when the India-US interim trade framework removed American duties on certain Indian aircraft parts. Aequs chairman Aravind Melligeri called it a cash flow improvement rather than a strategic one, which is the more honest way to describe it.
The catch nobody puts in the headline
An order book is not revenue. In aerospace, the gap between the two runs into years.
Before a supplier ships a billable part, it has to pass first article inspection, hold process approvals, survive customer audits and build tooling that is worthless if the programme moves elsewhere. All of that is money going out.
Rossell said plainly that qualification costs and tooling squeezed its margins last quarter. Azad Engineering, which reports separately, expects its first Rolls-Royce batch only in the second half of this year, roughly three years after the contract.
That cost is also the moat. Once a supplier is qualified, moving the work means the OEM starting the whole exercise again with somebody new. It is why Aequs winning complete wheels instead of the parts inside them changes its economics, not just its order size.
The practical takeaway for anyone tracking these companies is to watch capacity utilisation and operating profit rather than net profit. During a heavy capex phase, the bottom line lags the actual capability by several quarters.
The names above them
These four sit in the middle of a much bigger structure.
HAL closed FY26 with an order book of ₹2.54 lakh crore, more than seven years of revenue. Tata runs the only two Airbus final assembly lines anywhere built with a partner, for the C-295 and H125. Dynamatic delivered its first full shipset of eight A220 doors from Bengaluru ahead of schedule. Azad Engineering holds an eight-year sole-source deal with Mitsubishi for hot-section turbine parts, and handed India’s first indigenous expendable turbojet engine to DRDO on 22 July.
Behind all of them, several aero component firms are lining up IPOs worth around ₹5,700 crore between them.
What to watch
The contrast with India’s auto component makers is worth noting. Those companies are riding a demand cycle and watching their margins compress. Aerospace suppliers are doing the opposite, spending years and cash to get qualified before the revenue arrives.
India aerospace Q1 FY27 leaves four open questions. Whether Unimech’s FACC parts move from paper to delivery. Whether Aequs fills that 22% consumer utilisation. Whether Rossell keeps booking orders at ₹240 crore a quarter. Whether MTAR’s aerospace revenue really doubles.
The one thing that could hold all of them back is people. Asia-Pacific is expected to be 33% short of licensed technicians by 2032, with wages climbing 8% to 12% a year until then. India’s edge in this business was never the hourly rate. It will come down to who can turn a slow, custom qualification process into something they can repeat across programmes without starting from scratch each time.
All figures as reported for the quarter ended 30 June 2026. HAL, Azad Engineering, Dynamatic and Paras Defence reported on 7 August 2026 and are referenced here on previously disclosed data.