Embraer Partners with Mahindra for IAF 60-Aircraft Transport Bid, Teams with Adani for Civil Aviation

Embraer announced separate partnerships with India's Mahindra Group and Adani Group as part of its India strategy. Mahindra will be Embraer's partner for the Indian Air Force's Multi-Role Transport Aircraft (MTA) programme, under which Embraer is offering its KC-390 Millennium twin-engine transport jet, while Adani Group will partner with Embraer on the civilian aircraft side to address demand for regional connectivity flights.

Embraer Defence & Security President and CEO Bosco Da Costa Junior confirmed the partnerships in an interaction with ANI on September 27, 2026, stating the arrangements are fixed and will not change. He said Embraer conducted a C-390 demonstration in India in 2023 before selecting Mahindra as its MTA partner following a detailed market analysis. The IAF's MTA programme seeks to procure 60 transport aircraft, with an option for a further 50 per cent additional units, to begin replacing the service's ageing transport fleet. Five Indian companies — Mahindra, Tata, Hindustan Aeronautics Limited (HAL), Reliance Defence and Adani — have received the Request for Proposal from the Defence Ministry for the programme.

Embraer is positioning the KC-390 as a replacement for the IAF's Antonov An-32 and as a platform to standardise the service's medium transport fleet. Bosco said the KC-390 currently achieves 93 per cent fleet availability and 99 per cent mission accomplishment rates globally, and that one operator with more than four units achieved 100 per cent availability in the previous month. The aircraft has also demonstrated operations from unpaved desert runways during a one-week trial with the UAE Air Force. Embraer's global KC-390 order book stands at approximately 70 aircraft, including recent orders from the UAE for 10 aircraft and Colombia for 2 additional aircraft.

This pairing of a foreign OEM with local industrial houses follows a familiar shape in large defence procurements: the aircraft maker supplies the platform and its operational record, while the domestic partner supplies the manufacturing, assembly or offset presence the buyer's rules require. Embraer's choice to run two separate partnerships — Mahindra for the military transport bid, Adani for civil regional connectivity — lets it pursue government and commercial demand through different local channels rather than one blended arrangement.

The MTA competition itself remains a multi-way contest, with five Indian companies holding the Request for Proposal and each likely to be paired with a different foreign platform offer; Embraer's fleet-availability and mission-accomplishment figures are the evidence it is putting forward to argue the KC-390 fits that requirement. Bosco's description of India as a potential hub for supply chain and MRO expansion signals that Embraer's ambitions extend beyond this one programme into servicing operators elsewhere.

What happens next depends on how the Defence Ministry evaluates the competing RFP responses and how quickly Mahindra and Embraer can formalise their MTA offer against rival bids tied to the other four Indian partners.