Nipun diving support vessel was delivered to the Indian Navy on Thursday, with Hindustan Shipyard Limited handing over the second of its two Nistar class DSVs at Visakhapatnam. The ship has been designed and constructed to the classification rules of the Indian Register of Shipping.

The name draws on Sanskrit.

What Nipun diving support vessel brings to the fleet

Nipun signifies one who is adept, capable and well versed in a particular discipline, and the Navy is framing the vessel as living up to it, highly specialised and built for deep sea dive operations and rescue operations at sea. The ship carries state of the art dive equipment and is fitted for deep sea saturation diving.

A side diving stage has also been provided for diving operations.

Remotely operated vehicles extend the ship's reach further, handling diver monitoring and deep sea salvage work that a crew alone could not manage at depth. Nipun will also serve as the mother ship for the Deep Submergence Rescue Vehicle, the vessel that would be sent down to evacuate personnel from a submarine in distress. That pairing, DSV and DSRV, is the core of how the Navy plans to mount a rescue if a boat is ever disabled on the seabed, a niche capability shared by only a handful of navies worldwide.

A second hull after Nistar

Nipun and its sister ship Nistar were launched together at Hindustan Shipyard on 22 September 2022, under a contract the Navy signed with the yard in September 2018.

Other public sector yards have had milestones of their own this year, but Nistar went on to delivery in July 2025 and was commissioned as INS Nistar days later, becoming the Navy's first indigenously designed and built DSV. Nipun's delivery on Thursday follows roughly a year on from that.

Built with a wide MSME base

More than 120 MSME vendors across India were engaged in building the two ships, sourcing yard material, equipment and services through the government's GeM procurement portal.

Indigenous content near three quarters

The Navy has described the Nipun diving support vessel handover as another milestone in its pursuit of indigenous shipbuilding, upholding the government's Aatmanirbhar Bharat vision, and as a step toward strengthening its capability in the domain of deep sea dive operations. The figure sits in the same range as recent shallow water combatants delivered by other Navy shipyards.

A yard building out its portfolio

Hindustan Shipyard, brought under the Ministry of Defence's administrative control in 2010, built its reputation over decades on ship repair and submarine refit work at Visakhapatnam.

The DSV pair sits alongside newer orders at the yard, including the keel laying of the first of five Fleet Support Ships in November 2024, part of a broader push to grow the Hindustan Shipyard Limited orderbook beyond repair work and into complex new construction for the fleet, a trajectory not unlike the one Cochin Shipyard has followed with its own anti-submarine warfare programme.

The Indian Navy did not name any officers present at Thursday's handover in its release.