INSV Kaundinya, the Navy’s pioneering stitched sailing vessel built using traditional techniques, is undertaking her maiden overseas voyage to Oman on Monday (December 29, 2025).
The vessel, which will be flagged off from Porbandar in Gujarat for Muscat, symbolically retraces the historic maritime routes that connected India with the wider Indian Ocean.
“Unlike contemporary vessels, her wooden planks are stitched together using coconut coir rope and sealed with natural resins, reflecting a shipbuilding tradition once prevalent along India’s coasts and across the Indian Ocean,” the Defence Ministry said.
This technology enabled Indian mariners to undertake long-distance voyages to West Asia, Africa and Southeast Asia long before the advent of modern navigation and metallurgy, the officials said.
The project was undertaken through a tripartite agreement between the Ministry of Culture, the Indian Navy and Hodi Innovations as part of India’s efforts to rediscover and revive indigenous knowledge systems.
INSV Kaundinya is a stitched sail ship, based on a 5th century CE ship depicted in the paintings of Ajanta Caves. Following the keel laying in September 2023, the vessel’s construction was undertaken using a traditional method of stitching by a team of skilled artisans from Kerala, led by master shipwright Babu Sankaran. Over several months, the team painstakingly stitched wooden planks on the ship’s hull using coir rope, coconut fibre and natural resin. The ship was launched in February 2025 at Goa.
The Indian Navy played a central role in the project, overseeing the design, technical validation, and construction process. With no surviving blueprints or physical remnants, the design had to be extrapolated from a two-dimensional artistic iconography and the project demanded a unique interdisciplinary approach, combining archaeological interpretation, Naval architecture, hydrodynamic testing, and traditional craftsmanship, according to the Navy.
Navy formally inducted the naval sailing vessel on May 21 at the Karwar Naval base, in Karnataka.
The newly inducted vessel incorporates several culturally significant features. The sails display motifs of the Gandabherunda and the Sun, her bow bears a sculpted Simha Yali , and a symbolic Harappan style stone anchor adorns her deck, each element evoking the rich maritime traditions of ancient India. Named after Kaundinya, the Indian mariner who sailed across the Indian Ocean to Southeast Asia, the ship serves as a tangible symbol of India’s long-standing traditions of maritime exploration, trade, and cultural exchange, the Navy said.