Mr. J D Patil is a Whole-time Director, and Senior Executive Vice President for L&T’s Defence Business and New Age Smart Technology businesses (Smart & Safe Cities & Communication, and L&T NxT). He is an alumnus of IIT Mumbai, having pursued M. Tech (Mechanical Engineering) in 1978.
He has a rich, more than four-decade long career in L&T and has been instrumental in growing the nascent Technology and Product Development Group of L&T’s corporate R&D with a focus on top end inter-disciplinary Product Development.
Mr. Patil has spearheaded the company’s foray in the Defence sector since the inception of this segment in L&T in mid-eighties; a decade and a half ahead of the opening up of Defence Production for participation by Private Companies in 2001 (licensing it in 2002). He led the development efforts for the first orders for weapon delivery systems from DRDO for missiles under IGMDP with Dr Kalam at the helm.
Over the years, with his leadership, L&T built a portfolio of indigenous, in-house products, systems and technologies both on its own and by teaming up with DRDO and with the Indian Navy, and is today engaged in design-to-delivery of solutions across its chosen Defence segments. Mr. Patil oversees the Defence Business of L&T with a focus on Naval Platforms (Submarines & Warships), Armoured Systems, Naval & Land Weapon Launch & Engineering Systems, Gun Systems, Missiles Systems, Radar Systems, Military Communication Systems, Unmanned Systems & Avionics.
Mr. Patil also oversees L&T’s Space business and provided leadership to its position as the longest and most mature industry partner of ISRO (spanning five decades) towards development of special test facilities, Launch Vehicle systems & host of other hardware. Mr. Patil was a member of the 12th Plan review committee for Dept of Space. He was also a member of the Composite Implementation Team for Production (Scale up) of PSLV in 2016.
Mr Patil is also responsible for the Strategic initiative ‘L&T-NxT’ as market offering through use of new age technologies, such as IIoT, digitalization and analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Augmented / Virtual Reality, Geo-spatial applications and Cyber Security leveraging the Domain expertise of L&T across diverse Industry segments.
He also oversees Smart Cities, Safe Cities and Communication business with a focus on making our cities Smart and Safe. In last four years of beginning this as an initiative, L&T has emerged as the largest Indian player in this sector with series of success stories such as Kumbh mela, Odisha costal storm warning system, and converting our cities into smart across 26 major cities of India including Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Delhi to name a few.
Besides being Whole-Time Director – Defence & Smart Technologies Businesses and member of the Board of Directors of L&T, Mr Patil is Chairman of the Board of Directors of L&T MBDA Missile Systems Limited. He is President of Society of Indian Defence Manufacturers – a unique society representing Indian Defence Manufacturers with focus on indigenising the Defence Sector, and was founder Vice President of SIDM, setup under the aegis of the CII.
He is a member of CII National Committee Chairs CII committee on Strategic Manufacturing and member of Associations council of CII. He also serves on the PMA – India Managing Committee.
Earlier Mr Patil has served as Member of Steering Committee, National Executive Committee and Chairman Defence & Aerospace Committee of FICCI. He has been conferred Honorary Fellowship by Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), the Project Management Associates – India.
Mr Patil has been honoured by IIT Bombay, his alma mater, with the prestigious Distinguished Alumnus Award in the Diamond Jubilee Year of the Institute. Recently he has also been conferred with Honorary Membership of Indian Institute of Metals (IIM).
