Aplab is a specialist power-electronics company that has spent six decades quietly building the electrical backbone for India’s most mission-critical institutions - its banks, its defence forces, its airports and its research labs. Founded in 1964 by the Deodhar family and run from a single consolidated facility in Navi Mumbai, the company designs and assembles the systems that keep power clean, uninterrupted and precisely controlled where failure is not an option. The recurring logic across its history is self-reliant, in-house design - it makes what the country cannot easily import, and it keeps those systems running for decades afterwards, which is why a procurement officer, the company says, “will not be blamed for choosing Aplab”. # Business segments A single engine with four complementary cylinders - power control and conversion, test instrumentation, banking automation, and a nationwide service network - all feeding the same core promise of extreme reliability for high-stakes Indian customers. ## 1. Power Control and Conversion Electronics: the protected core of the business **This is where Aplab’s deepest engineering moat lives - a wide range of power backup, conditioning and conversion systems sold into a defence market that values breadth of product and long track record over price.** - **Wider product range than any single rival** - Aplab makes Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPS), frequency converters, automatic changeover switches, isolation transformers and aviation ground power units, while no UPS competitor also makes test power supplies and no ground-power rival also competes in UPS. That cross-category breadth, built over more than 60 years, makes it a one-stop supplier for defence customers who prefer a single proven vendor. - **Defence is the anchor customer** - post-Covid, the company deliberately focused on its higher-margin local defence business, supplying mil-grade ground power units (the KAAS Series) for military helicopters and jets, and ruggedized UPS systems developed for specific naval projects like the P-17A frigate programme. Government defence spending has been rising in multi-fold increments, which pulls demand for backup and ground power systems directly with it. - **Protected by the cost of failure** - in banking, aviation and defence, the price of a power-system failure is measured in grounded aircraft or crashed data centres, so the purchase decision turns on reliability and service rather than the lowest tender. That dynamic does not fully shield Aplab from price competition, as there are instances of order losses on price for smaller defence project requirements. - **A new commercial leg is being tested** - the recently launched LLIT series of commercial-grade UPS targets small offices, taking the technology built for high-spec defence applications into a broader, more price-sensitive market. The company is also developing active harmonic filters for its own premises, with a view to launching them as a new product line. - **Assembly, not heavy manufacturing** - production is electronic assembly with very minimal power requirements, meaning the business is light on industrial infrastructure and can operate from its consolidated Navi Mumbai facility. ## 2. Test and Measurement Instrumentation: the lab-standard precision business **Aplab is the only Indian manufacturer of rack-mount programmable AC and DC power sources - the kind of equipment that sits in every electronics R&D lab, generating precisely controlled voltage for testing.** - **The only domestic source for programmable rack-mount units** - no other Indian company makes these programmable AC and DC sources, which gives Aplab a unique position in government and institutional labs that have local-content requirements. The LONAR Series of programmable AC sources, named after Maharashtra’s Lonar lake, is the flagship line. - **Cross-segment isolation that works as a moat** - no competitor to the LONAR Series also competes with Aplab on UPS systems, which means a customer who buys lab power supplies and later needs backup power sees only Aplab across both categories. That shared brand umbrella lowers the trust barrier for repeat purchases. - **A small but sticky revenue stream** - regulated DC power supplies and test and measuring instruments together contributed roughly 19% of turnover in FY24, with the segment serving electronics R&D labs across industries. Lab equipment tends to have long replacement cycles, but once specified into a lab, the brand tends to stay. ## 3. Banking and Business Automation: the volume-driven tender business **Self-service kiosks and AI-based cheque imaging systems sold to India’s giant public-sector banks, where the game is winning lowest-bidder tenders and then earning from consumables and service.** - **AI-powered kiosks for a paper-to-digital shift** - the Intelliprint AI passbook kiosk and AI-based cheque deposit and imaging kiosks are the flagship products, designed for a moment when the RBI is pushing for two-hour cheque truncation and banks want zero-manual-effort systems. The software that runs the image processing is developed in-house. - **The real income is in consumables and support** - the hardware itself is sold into an extremely price-sensitive tender market dominated by large PSU banks that award contracts on a lowest-common-denominator basis. Income in this segment comes primarily from the ongoing supply of consumables and service support after the machines are installed. - **A software pivot is being explored** - Aplab has built in-house software IT assets for its automation products and has constituted a team to investigate offering software as a service and software consulting, which would shift the revenue model away from hardware tenders. ## 4. Customer Service and Support: the loyalty engine that feeds all three **A pan-India support network stretching from Leh Ladakh to the Andamans, turning long-lifecycle power electronics into a recurring revenue stream - and the company’s stated ambition is for this to become half of total revenue.** - **One of the few with a truly national in-house service footprint** - Aplab maintains its own technical support presence across India, which is rare among Indian power-electronics manufacturers and acts as a powerful brand differentiator. That reach means higher operational costs than newer entrants, but it also means a customer in a remote defence installation or a rural bank branch gets direct support rather than third-party service. - **Recurring revenue from maintenance contracts** - the company earns annuity-style income from Annual Maintenance and Support contracts on equipment that can stay in the field for decades. Service income contributed roughly 21% of turnover in FY24, and the long-term aspirational goal is to take that to 50%. - **Service recognition is milestone-based** - revenue from service is booked when specific milestone events stipulated in agreements are achieved, which aligns income recognition with actual delivery of support rather than just contract signing. # Group structure and partners **A promoter-led, standalone Indian company with no subsidiaries or joint ventures, recently undergoing a generational transition at the top while restructuring its capital base.** - **No subsidiaries, no joint ventures** - Aplab operates as a single legal entity with no subsidiary companies, which keeps the corporate structure simple and all operations under one roof. - **Promoter-led with a recent generational shift** - the company was founded by Mr. P.S. Deodhar, who passed away in January 2024. His wife, Mrs. Amrita P. Deodhar, a commerce graduate and entrepreneur with over four decades of experience in electronics manufacturing and distribution, took over as Chairperson and Managing Director in April 2024 and served until May 2026, when Mr. Nishith P. Deodhar was appointed as Executive Director. The promoter group held roughly 35% of the company as of FY25. - **A cleaned-up balance sheet and a rights issue** - in FY23, promoter loans were converted into equity and preference shares, turning the company’s net worth positive. A rights issue of up to Rs. 25 crore was approved in early 2025, with shareholders also approving an increase in authorised share capital to create headroom. - **Exit from the UK educational business** - post-Covid, the company exited its UK business supplying high-school-level electrical laboratory equipment, sharpening the focus on the domestic defence and industrial core.