MKU Limited

MKU Limited started in Kanpur in 1985 as M. Kumar Udyog, a supplier of fibre-reinforced plastic parts to the Indian Army, and delivered its first batch of composite military helmets in 1989. Four decades later the family-controlled company runs three named businesses and sells into more than a hundred countries. Kavro is the protection business and the oldest of the three. On the soldier side it covers ballistic helmets, tactical and concealable body armour, hard armour plates, ballistic shields and briefcases, and the Kiro'X line of ballistic ceramics that feeds the plates. Two helmets carry the brand furthest. The Kavro Doma 360, shown at Milipol Paris in 2023, was presented as a rifle-rated combat helmet tested across five zones of the shell against 7.62x39 mm, 7.62x51 mm and 5.56x45 mm ammunition rather than only fragments and pistol rounds, and the Kavro SCH 111 T Veer was designed at Aero India 2023 to give Sikh personnel ballistic protection compatible with religious head coverings and night vision mounts. The same Kavro brand extends to platform protection, where MKU builds add-on composite armour, ballistic panels, cockpit and floor protection, crew compartment kits and spall liners for vehicles, helicopters, fixed-wing aircraft and naval hulls. The company puts its installed base at more than 1,800 land platforms, over 400 airborne platforms and around 700 naval vessels.

Netro is the electro-optics arm, and it has become the faster-moving half of the company. The catalogue covers night vision weapon sights, monoculars, goggles including aviation patterns for helicopter crews, thermal weapon sights and imagers, laser rangefinders and multi-sensor observation systems for platforms as well as individual soldiers. The Netro NW-3000 image-intensified weapon sight anchors the range. In October 2025 the Indian Ministry of Defence signed a contract worth 659.47 crore rupees with an MKU-led consortium for 29,762 night sights and associated equipment for the Army's 7.62x51 mm rifles, quoting engagement out to roughly 500 metres under starlight and more than half indigenous content, with first deliveries reported by Janes as due through 2026. MKU has also pushed into thermal cores, launching the Netro Aksion module in Europe as a component sale to other integrators.

Navro is the newest line and takes the company into sustainment. It offers maintenance, repair, overhaul and life-extension work on aircraft, helicopters, naval vessels, armoured fighting vehicles, infantry combat vehicles and air defence systems, usually combined with a night-enablement or sensor upgrade. In 2026 MKU was reported as the first Indian private firm to win long-term aircraft maintenance contracts from the Indian Air Force. Manufacturing spans five plants in India and Germany, with further operations in Brazil and the United Arab Emirates and joint ventures signed in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia to localise production for those markets.