Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Company Profile, Products and Revenue

Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited, India’s Mumbai-based warship and submarine builder, is the yard behind all six Kalvari-class Scorpene submarines and the four Project 15B Visakhapatnam-class destroyers. Its origins trace to a Bombay dockyard of the 1770s, and it now sits at the center of India’s plan to build its own surface fleet and submarines.

1774

Year the Bombay dockyard roots date back to

6

Kalvari-class Scorpene submarines built

4

Project 15B Visakhapatnam-class destroyers

~81%

Indian government stake, reported

Mazagon Dock at a glance

Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited, usually shortened to MDL, is a defense public sector undertaking under India’s Ministry of Defence. It is the only Indian yard that currently builds both large surface combatants and conventional submarines, which gives it an unusually central role in the Indian Navy’s indigenization push.

Company fact sheet

Item	Detail
Full name	Mazagon Dock Shipbuilders Limited (MDL)
Headquarters	Mumbai, Maharashtra, India
Heritage	Roots in a Bombay dockyard dating to the 1770s; later a private firm, taken over by the state in 1960
Ownership	Government of India, roughly 81 percent after a 2018 IPO and later share sales (reported)
Sites	Main Mumbai yard plus the Nhava shipyard across the harbor
Core business	Destroyers, frigates, conventional submarines, offshore platforms, ship repair

Source: public company information; shareholding is approximate and changes with market sales.

Who owns Mazagon Dock

The Indian government holds the large majority of MDL, reported at roughly 81 percent, with the balance in public hands after the company listed in October 2018. Day-to-day oversight sits with the Ministry of Defence’s Department of Defence Production, the same body that supervises sister yards and companies such as Hindustan Aeronautics and Bharat Electronics.

That ownership explains both the strengths and the limits of the yard. Steady naval orders give it a long order book, but schedules and pricing follow state procurement rules, and exports have so far been modest compared with the big Korean and European builders.

What ships does Mazagon Dock build

Major MDL warship programs

Program	Type	Status
Project 75 Kalvari class	Scorpene diesel-electric submarines	Six boats built, the last (Vagsheer) launched in 2022
Project 15B Visakhapatnam class	Guided-missile destroyers	Four ships: Visakhapatnam, Mormugao, Imphal, Surat
Project 17A Nilgiri class	Stealth frigates	Four of seven built at MDL; the rest at Garden Reach
Project 15A Kolkata class	Guided-missile destroyers	Three ships delivered
Project 17 Shivalik class	Stealth frigates	Three ships delivered
Project 75 (India)	Follow-on submarines with a foreign partner	Reported selection of Germany’s TKMS as technology partner; contract details still being finalized

Source: Indian Navy and company information; program status as reported, and subject to change.

The Visakhapatnam class, displacing roughly 7,400 tonnes, is the current flagship of the yard’s surface work. The ships carry a mix of Indian and imported sensors and weapons, including the BrahMos supersonic missile, and represent India’s most capable indigenously built destroyers.

Mazagon Dock Scorpene and Project 75I

MDL built the six Kalvari-class submarines under a technology-transfer deal with France’s Naval Group. The program was slow, with first delivery arriving years after the original schedule, but it gave the yard submarine construction skills that few countries outside the established powers possess.

The next step is Project 75 (India), intended to add larger air-independent-propulsion boats. Reporting has pointed to a partnership with Germany’s TKMS, while talks on additional Scorpene-type hulls also continued. Treat the final numbers with caution until contracts are signed and published.

Mazagon Dock revenue and order book

MDL’s annual revenue has recently run in the range of roughly ₹9,000 to ₹10,000 crore, or about $1.1 to $1.2 billion, based on its financial filings. Its order book, dominated by submarine and destroyer work, has been reported well above ₹30,000 crore, enough for several years of activity. The company is also diversifying into offshore platforms and ship repair.

The outlook depends on execution. Project 75 (India) and the pipeline of follow-on frigates and destroyers could lift the order book sharply, but only if the yard can expand capacity and keep supplier chains moving. In global terms it remains a mid-sized builder, well behind the leaders in our top 10 naval shipbuilders ranking.

MDL has also said it intends to widen its scope beyond the Indian Navy, with submarine repair and refit, offshore projects for the energy sector and potential overseas partnerships on its list. The yard has modernized its Mumbai facilities in recent years, adding a large covered construction hall and upgraded dry docks, so it can work on more than one major hull at once.

Editor’s read

MDL is less a commercial shipbuilder than an instrument of Indian naval policy. Its value lies in the rare combination of submarine and destroyer skills, and its main risk is schedule discipline, not demand.