Sona Comstar to Diversify Railway Product Offerings to Drive Revenue: Group CEO

Sona BLW Precision Forgings Ltd. (Sona Comstar) is deepening its push into the railway segment with a new wave of product development, marking a shift toward business diversification and fresh revenue generation. The auto component manufacturer, best known for its electric vehicle driveline systems, is now expanding into high-tech rail equipment, targeting the country’s growing metro and high-speed rail infrastructure.

“We are in the process of developing new products including automatic plug door systems for metro and semi high-speed trains, HVAC systems, and electric control panels,” said Vivek Vikram Singh, Managing Director and Group CEO of Sona Comstar. “This is part of our deliberate strategy to diversify our product portfolio, add new revenue streams, and tap into the upcoming metro and high-speed train projects and not just rely on Indian Railways as a single customer.”

This pivot is a natural extension of the company’s historical strategy, Singh explained. Sona Comstar has followed a similar roadmap in the past by growing from a single-product supplier to a multi-product engineering business across driveline systems, electric motors, and automotive sensors.

“Our approach in the railway segment mirrors what we’ve successfully done since 2015 in drivelines, since 2019 in motors, and since 2023 in sensors,” Singh said. “We’ve transformed the business from being primarily a single-product company to a diversified engineering powerhouse. Our analysis has shown that this has been the single biggest growth lever. It’s how we’ve grown revenue ten times and profit more than twenty times in the last decade.”

With India’s rail infrastructure expanding rapidly, particularly in the metro and semi-high-speed categories, Sona Comstar sees strong momentum. Amit Mishra Head, Railway Business & Investor Relations at the company emphasized that their long-term roadmap for the rail segment includes significant investment in complex, high-barrier products such as brake systems, couplers, and suspension systems.

“In the railway space, we are already market leaders in brake systems in India,” said Mishra. “Couplers and suspension systems are the other two core areas we are focusing on. All of them are complex and technology-intensive, and we see ample room to deepen our product offering within each of these verticals.”

He added that the company’s five-year roadmap includes several new products currently under development that are expected to enter production over the next few years. “Given the rolling stock production projections from the government, we believe there are strong tailwinds that will support this segment’s growth,” Mishra said. “We’re also actively working on increasing our presence in the metro segment and in select export markets.”

The company’s expansion into railways took a major step forward in June when it completed the acquisition of the Railway Equipment Division from Escorts Kubota Ltd. for ₹1,600 crore. The transaction, first announced in October 2024 and executed as a slump sale, has now been fully integrated into Sona Comstar’s operations. 

The newly acquired business contributed to the latest quarterly results, the company expects its contribution to grow meaningfully in the coming quarters. While the company refrained from giving precise revenue guidance for the railway division, both Singh and Mishra signaled confidence in its growth prospects, citing the government’s infrastructure pipeline and Sona Comstar’s product engineering capabilities.