Hyderabad Dropout Now Makes Parts for Boeing and Rolls-Royce

Rakesh Chopdar never finished high school, but components he manufactures today power some of the most sophisticated aircraft in the sky.

He dropped out after 10th grade in Hyderabad and went straight to work in his father's small workshop at 16. The family business made nuts and bolts, unglamorous industrial parts with thin profit margins. There were no engineering textbooks or formal training, just Chopdar learning to operate machines by making thousands of parts correctly, one at a time.

Everything changed in his mid-twenties when a customer brought in an aerofoil, a curved blade used inside turbines. Finding manufacturers who could make these to exacting specifications at reasonable cost was nearly impossible. Most companies wouldn't even try.

Chopdar asked for a few months to prove himself. He delivered.

That first breakthrough order for a European power turbine manufacturer became the foundation for AZAD Engineering, officially launched in 2008. He started in a 200-square-meter shed in Balanagar with a single second-hand CNC machine.

The work expanded from power generation turbines into aerospace and defence, where error isn't an option. When a part fails at 30,000 feet or inside a missile system, there are no returns or refunds. AZAD now supplies GE Aviation, Siemens Energy, Honeywell Aerospace, Boeing, Airbus, Rolls-Royce, and Pratt & Whitney, alongside Indian institutions like HAL and DRDO.

In January 2024, Rolls-Royce named AZAD a strategic partner for manufacturing critical components for defence aircraft engines. Cricket legend Sachin Tendulkar invested in the company, calling it a chance to back India's push toward complex manufacturing.

The numbers tell the growth story. Revenue jumped from Rs 124 crore in FY20 to Rs 251.7 crore in FY23, a 27% annual growth rate. AZAD went public in December 2023, raising Rs 740 crore. Today the company carries a market value exceeding $1.3 billion.

Why This Inspires

Precision aerospace manufacturing is dominated by companies with decades of institutional engineering behind them. Chopdar broke into this unforgiving industry starting from a family workshop and a 10th-grade education.

His success rests on an unglamorous truth: you don't need elite credentials to make something perfectly. You need the discipline to make it perfectly a hundred times in a row, consistently, until the world's most demanding manufacturers trust you with parts they can't afford to get wrong.

From a teenager on a shop floor to a supplier for Rolls-Royce, Chopdar proved that precision beats pedigree.