nagpur punebased taneja aerospace and aviation limited taal has bagged the contract for life cycle upgradation of mig29 fighter aircraft of the indian air force iaf taal competed with much bigger players like tatas lt and punj lloyd among total eight bidders to get this deal worth over rs 12 crore the deal signed on wednesday is being dubbed as the first of its kind because so far only smaller jobs like manufacture of spares or other allied services were outsourced by the iaf never before has a private company been involved in retrofitting of an entire aircraft till now this was the sole domain of defence psu hindustan aeronautics limited hal toi had reported in december last year that seven private players had evinced interest in the aircraft upgrade contract they had responded to the request for information rfi floated by iaf for upgrade of mig29s and an32 the latter is a transport aircraft while the mig29 is known to be among the best air defence planes with the iaf as compared to other bidders taal is not a known name currently it has a turnover of rs 50 crore but it also has the credit of being maybe the first indian company to have entirely built an aircraft in the 1990s it had made a hobby aircraft meant to be sold to flying clubs however the project did not take off taal is currently a tier1 supplier to hal with its aviation unit located at hossur near mysore the project is aimed at increasing the life cycle of mig29s for a period of another 40 years iaf will be providing taal the spares and components to fitted in the aircraft the job will be executed at the base repair depot brd at nashik the brds come under iafs maintenance command headquartered at nagpur talking to toi after the contract was signed taal ceo nc agrawal said iaf will provide training for the first two aircraft after which it aims to finish four mig29s every three months iaf has close to 50 mig29s in all the work will be jointly done by iaf and taal agrawal said considering the size of the job the company plans to hire experienced manpower from iaf and hal the size of the contract may not be much but taal finds that it will help the company go a long way even for us it will be treading a new path with all its risks however it will provide an experience in an altogether new field said agrawal he hoped that it will eventually lead to a private player being involved in making of a military aircraft a similar move is expected for the an32s with the private vendor expected to be finalized within the next week said a source in iaf