Inside Titan Engineering & Automation Limited’s facilities in Hosur, robots, gantries, conveyors and vision systems work across assembly lines built for products ranging from automotive electronics to electric powertrain components.
A majority of the company’s automotive projects over the past four to five years have been related to electric vehicles, spanning both two-wheelers and passenger vehicles, according to M Venkatesan, Vice President and Head of Automation Business at TEAL.
It is a long way from where the business began. “We were building machines for Titan before, watches,” Venkatesan told Autocar Professional.
In Titan's early watchmaking years, India's foreign-exchange controls and import restrictions made sourcing production equipment from overseas difficult. That pushed the company to develop an in-house engineering capability, with its engineers designing and building some of the machinery needed for the watch business.
That internal capability gradually moved outside the watch plant. Delphi became one of its early automation customers, opening the door to the automotive industry. What began as an internal engineering support function eventually grew into Titan's Precision Engineering Division, which became Titan Engineering & Automation Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary, in 2017.
What began as an engineering support function eventually grew into Titan’s Precision Engineering Division and was carved out as Titan Engineering & Automation Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary, in 2015.
The journey was not linear. TEAL experimented with tools, plastic injection moulds, automotive components and oil-and-gas work before narrowing its focus to automation for assembly and testing, and precision manufacturing for aerospace and defence.
“We are an exploratory company,” NP Sridhar, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of TEAL, said. “Unless you explore, you never know what that territory looks like.”
“We did all this... and then we sort of narrowed down. And now we think we are in the sweet spot,” he said.
From an Internal Capability to a ₹1,500-Crore Business
That experimentation has produced a business of meaningful scale.
TEAL today operates across automation solutions, aerospace and defence, and electronics manufacturing. Its automation business develops turnkey assembly and testing systems for automobiles, new energy, electronics, medical devices and consumer goods, while its aerospace and defence operations manufacture high-precision components and sub-assemblies.
According to Titan’s FY26 annual report, TEAL has served more than 160 customers, delivered over 850 unique assembly lines and exports to more than 21 countries. It has more than 650,000 sq ft of shop-floor space.
Its financial growth accelerated sharply in FY26. Income jumped 73% to ₹1,497 crore from ₹866 crore in the previous year, while profit before tax more than doubled to ₹259 crore from ₹113 crore. Profit after tax stood at ₹192 crore.
The company has now reached a point where the constraint is no longer just finding business. Its existing capacity is fully utilised, according to Sridhar, and TEAL plans to invest close to ₹400 crore this year.
“This year we are going to be investing close to 400 crore,” Sridhar said. “And that investment will continue. I think there is a lot of opportunity. Expansion will keep happening.”
On the growth outlook, Sridhar declined to give a long-term target but sees room for TEAL to maintain its recent pace if India's economic and investment momentum remains supportive.
“We have been growing at 20-25%,” he said. “If all goes well for the country, GDP growth is the same, momentum is there, I don't see any reason why we shouldn't be growing at this pace.”
Titan's annual reports show TEAL's income rose from ₹462 crore in FY20 to ₹1,497 crore in FY26, implying a compound annual growth rate of about 22% between FY20 and FY26, despite a Covid-led decline in FY21.
Building the Next Growth Engine
Automotive automation helped build TEAL, but the company expects its next phase to be broader.
Sridhar sees equipment for electronics manufacturing services, semiconductors, batteries, solar and other new-energy industries becoming important growth areas as India adds domestic manufacturing capacity.
“Semiconductor, solar, new energy, lithium-ion battery. All this will need equipment, and if you don't do something, it is going to get imported,” he said. “So we are seeing how we can build credible equipment capability in these segments. This is our focus now.”
The opportunity is not in making chips, solar modules or battery cells themselves. TEAL is positioning itself one level below these factories – designing the machines and automated systems required to assemble, handle, inspect and test products.
India’s manufacturing build-out provides the backdrop. As of June 2026, the government had approved 12 semiconductor manufacturing projects with proposed investment of around ₹1.64 lakh crore. The projects range from semiconductor fabrication to packaging, while the government’s Semicon 2.0 programme has also identified semiconductor equipment and materials as areas for domestic capability development.
Electronics provides an even larger existing manufacturing base. India’s electronics production rose 15.8% to about ₹13.11 lakh crore in FY26 from ₹11.32 lakh crore a year earlier, according to the government.
TEAL is already seeing that change in its own mix. Venkatesan estimated electronics at roughly 40% of the automation business, automotive at around 35%, with other segments accounting for much of the balance. He described electronics and automotive as the two key drivers of investment currently.
Sridhar expects the automation solutions business to scale faster than TEAL’s precision manufacturing operations.
“The equipment business is inherently scalable,” he said. Manufacturing services, in comparison, require greater customer-specific tailoring and capital. “It will grow, but I think the equipment will grow faster,” Sridhar said.
Titan’s annual report points in the same direction. TEAL is investing in capabilities including laser technologies, AI-based vision solutions and augmented reality, while focusing on green energy, semiconductors and electronics.
Automotive Changes Shape
The automotive sector will remain important to TEAL, but the nature of that business is changing.
Venkatesan said a majority of TEAL’s projects over the past four to five years have been EV-related, across both two-wheelers and four-wheelers.
Electrification creates demand for a different set of assembly and testing lines – battery packs, power electronics, electronic control systems and electric powertrain components – even as traditional engine and gearbox-related automation continues.
“Electrification is here to stay. It is going to grow faster. We are preparing ourselves,” Sridhar said.
He expects ICE-related automation to continue growing, albeit at a more muted pace, as India's passenger vehicle market remains underpenetrated.
The bigger change is likely to come from the rising electronics content of vehicles. “There is a certain EMS portion in automotive,” Sridhar said. “But I think if you really look at the EMS side of it. It is probably going to be the fastest, in terms of share and growth.”
“And we think we can do Semicon. We can do battery. We can do other new emerging segments,” he added. “We want to do import substitution.”
Vehicle manufacturing itself is also forcing changes in the machines TEAL builds.
Traditionally, an automation line could be designed for one specific product — an engine, motor or gearbox — and remain largely unchanged for years. Faster product cycles, multiple powertrain technologies and uncertainty over production volumes are making manufacturers seek more flexible equipment.
According to Venkatesan, that trend is changing now. Customers increasingly want systems that are highly flexible, modular in nature and adaptable to new products.
TEAL is responding with modular concepts that allow some stations and processes to be reconfigured, rather than forcing customers to invest in an entirely new line whenever a product changes.
The Automation Gap and Export
The larger opportunity for TEAL is not limited to newer industries. Indian factories themselves have room to become more automated.
India installed a record 9,120 industrial robots in 2024, up 7% from the previous year, according to the International Federation of Robotics. That made it the sixth-largest market globally for new installations. Automotive remained the biggest driver, accounting for 4,070 installations.
Yet the degree of automation within Indian factories varies widely, according to Sridhar. In many plants, the core manufacturing process may already be automated while machine tending — putting parts into a machine and taking them out — remains manual because the return on automating those activities can be harder to justify when labour costs are lower.
He expects that balance to gradually shift as manufacturers turn to higher levels of automation to unlock more production capacity.
Even as domestic manufacturing becomes a bigger opportunity, TEAL wants overseas business to regain momentum.
Its two principal businesses already have very different geographic profiles.
Around 95% of its manufacturing services business is export-oriented, Sridhar said. Automation is currently much more domestic, with the mix at roughly 70% India and 30% exports compared with around 50:50 earlier.
Sridhar expects automation exports to grow again, with the business mix “more likely to go back to 50-50.”
Venkatesan said overseas automation business had softened amid tariffs and weaker conditions in some international markets, but demand has started recovering over the past six months. He sees the recovery gaining pace from 2027.
TEAL’s export model is relatively asset-light outside India. The company designs and builds machines domestically and then sends engineers to customer factories for installation and commissioning. That approach has allowed it to export to more than 21 countries without building a large overseas workforce.
But it also creates another constraint. Engineers familiar with a machine often need to travel with it because installation and commissioning require detailed knowledge of how it was designed and built.
That makes engineering mobility and local technical support increasingly important if TEAL wants to scale overseas.
The Problem Money Alone Cannot Solve
TEAL can add factory space and machinery. Finding enough engineers may prove harder.
Asked about the biggest challenge to maintaining the company’s growth, Sridhar did not point first to demand, capital or competition.
“Competence, capability, people. Biggest challenge,” he said. Specialised engineering talent remains limited, he added, and “everybody is going to fish in the same pond as we go.”
The challenge is becoming more acute because semiconductors, electronics, batteries, EVs and factory automation require overlapping engineering capabilities.
“This is a niche skill now. We need to create supply of these niche skills,” Sridhar said. “If you want all these industries to grow, the first challenge we will face is how many people with the same skills exist.”
Artificial intelligence may help engineers work faster, but Sridhar does not see it replacing the physical skills required to build and commission machines.
“If I have to get a commissioning guy to bring up a machine at my customer's site, I can't use AI,” he said.
“There will be some productivity improvements... We still need engineers, we still need to design. We still need guys who can assemble.”
TEAL is looking at ways to work with government and institutions to expand the pool of specialised manufacturing talent.
There is some symmetry in TEAL's journey. Its engineering capability was born partly from Titan's need to reduce its dependence on imported watchmaking equipment. Three decades later, TEAL sees another import-substitution opportunity, this time in the machines needed to build EVs, electronics, batteries and semiconductors.
The difference is scale. TEAL is now a nearly ₹1,500-crore business with full capacity and another ₹400 crore of investment planned. After spending much of its history deciding where its engineering capabilities fit, the challenge now is whether it can add capacity and engineers quickly enough to capture the opportunities in front of it.