Samarthak multi-purpose vessel was delivered to the Indian Navy on Thursday, handed over by Larsen and Toubro from its Kattupalli Shipyard near Chennai. The ship is the first of two vessels ordered under the Navy's Multi Purpose Vessel project, and the first Indian Navy warship built by L&T.

It arrives as a trial platform first, a general purpose ship second.

What the Samarthak multi-purpose vessel is built to do

The ship is envisaged as a versatile trial and evaluation platform for the Navy, built to support the development of next generation weapons and sensors as they move from the drawing board toward service.

Samarthak's brief runs wider than trials alone. It is engineered for maritime surveillance and reconnaissance, offshore patrolling, and humanitarian assistance and disaster relief work when required. The name itself, meaning The Proponent, was chosen to signal a dependable enabler of multiple missions rather than a ship built around one job.


A slow build from keel to handover

The Ministry of Defence signed the contract for two Multi Purpose Vessels with L&T in March 2022, with keel laying for both hulls following a year later at the Kattupalli yard.

Samarthak itself was launched in October 2024, with Chief of the Naval Staff Admiral Dinesh K Tripathi presiding over the ceremony, an event L&T's own launch statement described in detail. Thursday's handover comes roughly two years on, the interval spent on outfitting and sea trials.

A sister ship not far behind

Utkarsh, the second MPV in the project, followed Samarthak down the slipway in January 2025, L&T said at the time, and is still working through trials of its own ahead of delivery.

Indigenous content behind the delivery

Over 75 percent of the Samarthak multi-purpose vessel is indigenous content, the Navy said at handover, a figure that carries weight given the ship's job as a testbed for weapons and sensors built in India rather than bought abroad. The delivery was framed as a reaffirmation of the government's Aatmanirbhar Bharat vision and a step toward a self sustaining domestic defence industrial ecosystem.

L&T's first Navy warships

Samarthak and Utkarsh extend warship construction beyond the traditional public sector yards. Cochin Shipyard has kept up its own run of Mahe class anti submarine craft deliveries through the same period, and Garden Reach Shipbuilders and Engineers launched an offshore patrol vessel in Kolkata earlier this month.

Support tonnage has grown alongside the combatants. The diving support vessel Nipun is set for commissioning at Mumbai at month's end.

Samarthak was given at its 2024 launch as 106 metres long and 16.8 metres wide, with a top speed of 15 knots, figures L&T has not revised since in any public statement on either ship.