Every organisation goes through a journey when numbers stop being figures on a balance sheet and start telling a story. For Bharat Electronics Ltd (BEL), that moment is now.

Over the last few years, the Bengaluru-headquartered defence electronics major has moved from being a robust, steady PSU to one of the most aggressively managed and closely watched companies in India’s strategic sector.

What changed is not just policy tailwinds; it is leadership and its committed employees. Manoj Jain, who took over as Chairman and Managing Director in June 2024, is a BEL lifer with a technologist’s pedigree.

A gold medallist in electronics engineering from REC Jaipur (now MNIT), he joined BEL in 1991 as a probationary engineer and spent three decades in the trenches of telecom equipment, electronic warfare and avionics, culminating in the role of Director (R&D) before moving to the top job.

Jain has repeatedly emphasised that BEL’s strategy rests on roadmaps for “future products and technologies, creation of IPRs and acquisition of key technologies,” aimed at keeping the company at the cutting edge of defence electronics. Under his watch, R&D has not been treated as discretionary spending; BEL has consistently ploughed back 6–7% of its turnover into research, a level more often associated with private technology players than PSUs.

On the numbers, the transformation is hard to miss. The PSU recorded robust gross sales of Rs 23,769 crore in FY25, with an RoE of 29.13%. Profit after tax increased at an accelerated pace—from Rs 3,943 crore in FY24 to Rs 5,287 crore in FY25.

The company is completely debt‑free today and has no long-term borrowings and a debt‑equity ratio of 0.0x across FY21–FY25. As of October 1, 2025, BEL’s order book stood at Rs 74,500 crore with Rs 12,500 crore of new orders received since the start of FY26. The management has guided for total order inflows of Rs 57,000 crore in FY26, including Quick Reaction Surface-to-Air Missile (QRSAM) orders worth Rs 30,000 crore.

BEL has been quietly building local capability in radars, communication systems, and electronic warfare. Flagship programmes like Akash air defence system, weapon-location radars and coastal surveillance systems sit squarely within this self-reliance narrative.

Even as supply chains were under stress, BEL chose to create new strategic business units and expand manufacturing. In the last couple of years, it has carved out focused SBUs in areas such as electronic warfare, unmanned systems and advanced communications, and backed them with new factories and test facilities.

The company is turning partnerships into an advantage rather than treating private players as adversaries. It has actively signed MoUs and transfer‑of‑technology agreements with DRDO labs and private companies, deepening its access to new technologies and expanding its ability to execute complex programmes.

According to financial services company Elite Wealth, part of InCred Capital, BEL’s positioning is difficult to replicate. It has seven decades of embedded relationships with the armed forces and DRDO, and 29 strategic business units spread across nine manufacturing locations, covering radars, naval systems, EW, avionics, communications and homeland security under one roof.

Perhaps its crowning glory was the deployment of the Integrated Drone Detection and Interdiction System, designed by DRDO and manufactured by BEL, during Operation Sindoor. This laser-based system destroyed several low-RCS drones and played an important role in the operation’s success.

For BEL, the Budget outlay translates into a deep pipeline. According to ScanX, a stock analysis tool from Dhan, the QRSAM programme alone is expected to yield orders of around Rs 30,000 crore, with BEL as a key systems integrator.

The company has guided revenue growth of over 15% in FY26, backed by expected order inflows of over Rs 27,000 crore and a strong execution run‑rate on its existing Rs 70,000-plus-crore book.

Yet, there is a broader story here beyond orders and margins. BEL shows that a PSU, when anchored in technology, disciplined in capital allocation and honest about its constraints, can compound value.

Under Manoj Jain, the company is not merely riding the Atmanirbhar Bharat wave, it is helping shape the contours of India’s defence electronics ecosystem. And that is perhaps the reason why he is the winner in the Bharat PSU Icon segment in the BT-PWC India’s Best CEOs 2026 list.