Dhoot Transmission Weighs In on Passenger Vehicle Wiring Harnesses

Dhoot Transmission is working out how to enter the passenger vehicle wiring harness business as it launches an initial public offering of up to Rs 3,067 crore. The company supplies two-wheeler, three-wheeler, commercial vehicle and off-highway customers, and passenger vehicles would be a new segment for it.

"We are evaluating the PV segment right now and we are just trying to see that which are the areas we should see," Group Chief Financial Officer Nitin Kalani said. "Of course, that is the area where we definitely want to expand."

Kalani listed it among the levers the company will pull after listing, alongside widening its battery assembly business and adding power electronics such as on-board chargers. "And also look at wiring harness for passenger vehicles. That is also an opportunity for us," he said.

Group CEO Naveen Kumar said the engineering has to arrive with the product. "If we are getting into product and we do not build the capability, it is going to be a problem," he said. Dhoot has about 140 people in research and development.

The company closed FY26 with revenue of Rs 4,626 crore and an EBITDA margin of 15.5 percent, up from Rs 900 crore in FY19. Bajaj Auto accounted for 32.33 percent of revenue in the nine months to December 2025. The top five customers together took 72.50 percent, up from 64.67 percent in FY23, so concentration has tightened as the company has grown. All five are two-wheeler makers.

Passenger cars accounted for 55.28 percent of India's automotive wiring harness market in 2024 and are growing fastest, at 6.28 percent a year to 2030, according to Mordor Intelligence, which sized the market at USD 1.75 billion in 2025. Motherson Sumi Wiring India leads it, closing FY26 with revenue of Rs 11,478 crore, 64 percent of it from passenger vehicles. Yazaki, Aptiv, Lear and Minda Corporation compete for the rest.

Capability is the first hurdle, and Dhoot has run into it before. When the company approached commercial vehicle and off-highway customers around 2014-15, they told it that two-wheeler harnesses were too small and too simple to qualify it for larger, more complex work. Managing Director Rahul Dhoot said he stopped arguing the point and bought the technology instead, acquiring TFC in the UK and Slovakia and Parkinson Harnesses in the UK in 2016-17. He said any future deal would follow the same logic. "We will do anything and everything which is connected to the wiring harness either backward or forward." Up to 10 percent of the IPO proceeds is reserved for unidentified acquisitions.

The offer comprises a fresh issue of up to Rs 1,400 crore and an offer for sale of over 1.91 crore equity shares, priced at Rs 829 to Rs 871 a share. Anchor bidding opens on Friday, August 7, and the issue runs from Monday, August 10 to Wednesday, August 12. At the cap the company is valued at 35.70 times FY26 earnings, against a peer group average of 55.31 times.