Relations with India can provide a great opportunity for Greece on bilateral level and on Indian companies investing in Greece to create innovative products jointly, National Defense Minister Nikos Dendias said on Monday.

Dendias made the statements after a private meeting with his Indian counterpart Rajnath Singh in New Delhi with which concluded his visit to the Asian country. Their meeting was followed by expanded talks between delegations that included both Greek and Indian defense ministers and their delegations.

Speaking of his visit, the Greek minister noted that he had the opportunity to meet with Indian External Affairs Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar and visit “companies and the country’s innovation ecosystem.” This allowed him to learn about “the way they think, the way they develop and reform their Armed Forces,” Dendias said.

His meeting with his counterpart Rajnath Singh led to a “deep and sincere exchange of views,” Dendias said. He added, “As a country, India is of great interest. For Greece to have a close relationship with a country of 1.4 billion people, with Armed Forces that are nearly 1.5 million strong, is something extraordinarily important. We also share systems. The Indian Air Force is also equipped with Rafale, like us.”

Dendias said he had signed an agreement on defense industry cooperation, the first of a series of agreements under negotiation, and called the relations with India “a strategic relationship, one of a long horizon for Greece that in my opinion could change to a great degree the reality of financial factors between the two countries.”

During the last day of his visit, the Greek minister also paid a visit to the Defense Production Center of India’s Defense Ministry in New Delhi, where he was provided with presentations on prospects of cooperation in defense innovation and technology. The meeting was attended by the leadership of public defense corporations of India and members of private innovation businesses. The Greek minister also paid a visit to the National Gallery of Modern Art and the exhbition on Greek artist Nikos Hadjikyriakos-Ghikas (Ghika), and later laid a wreath at the National War Memorial of India.

On Sunday, Dendias travelled to Bangalore to visit private defense companies and related high-tech businesses.