Forbes & Company is a 250-year-old survivor that has repeatedly shed its past to stay relevant - born as a Scottish trading house in 1767, it passed through the hands of the Campbells and the Tatas before landing with the Shapoorji Pallonji Group, and today it is a tightly focused, debt-free industrial company built around two engines: factory-floor automation and urban real estate development. Over the last five years, it has demerged its iconic Eureka Forbes water-purifier brand, spun off its precision-tools division into a separate listed company, and exited shipping, facilities services, and IT-enabled services - a deliberate sequence of amputations that left behind a clean, simple structure with no borrowings. The recurring pattern is one of pruning to the core: keep the businesses where the company has genuine engineering or development capability, and cut loose everything else. # Business segments Three engines at different stages - a niche industrial-automation unit rebuilding itself, a residential project nearing sell-out, and a commercial IT-park development just beginning - each funded without debt. ## 1. Coding & Industrial Automation: the factory-floor specialist **It makes the machines that etch serial numbers, batch codes and traceability data onto products racing down assembly lines - and increasingly wires up entire plants with Industry 4.0 controls.** - **Marks at 750 parts per minute** - the business builds conventional stamping markers, dot-peen systems that hammer tiny dots into metal, and laser markers across CO₂, UV, fibre and green wavelengths, with one high-speed solution deployed during the year marking electronic control units for a two-wheeler plant at 750 pieces a minute. - **Moving from standalone markers to connected systems** - over the last three years the division has shifted from selling individual marking machines toward special-purpose machines, automated traceability solutions and Industry 4.0 integration, which means it now wires the marker into the factory’s data network rather than just bolting it to the line. - **Rebuilt the go-to-market engine** - in FY25 the company installed new leadership, created dedicated supply-chain and quality teams, and restructured sales into zones with a channel-partner network, so the business is no longer reliant on a single sales approach. - **Spreads its bets across industries** - it serves pharmaceuticals, defence, automotive, engineering and electronics, and is deliberately pushing into steel, pharma and FMCG customers so that no single sector can knock it off course; no individual customer accounted for even a tenth of revenue in FY26. - **Bought its laser joint-venture partner** - the unit was originally a 50:50 venture with Spain’s MACSA ID, formed in 2022 to access laser technology; the company terminated the JV in March 2025, acquired the partner’s entire stake, and now runs it as a wholly owned subsidiary with a full laser portfolio in-house. ## 2. Real Estate: the patient developer **It builds and sells residential towers in Mumbai, rents out commercial property, and is now converting a former industrial plot into an IT park - all on its own balance sheet, without borrowing.** - **One flagship project, nearly sold out** - Project Vicinia in Chandivali, Mumbai, is a 50:50 joint development with a group entity; of the 294 units across two phases, 287 have been sold as of November 2024, Phase I possession has been handed over to buyers while Phase II is in the process of being handed over, and only the final amenities and infrastructure work remains, with a full occupation certificate expected by December 2026. - **A land bank turning into an IT park** - the company owns a 2.63-acre parcel at Wagle Estate, Thane, inside the MIDC industrial zone, where it has secured approval to change the land use from industrial to IT/ITES and is designing a private IT park with roughly 6.2 lakh square feet of built-up area spanning retail, commercial and office space. - **Steady rent from investment properties** - beyond development, the company earned about ₹22.7 crore in operating-lease rental income during FY26 from premises it owns and leases out, giving the segment a base-load of recurring cash even when no flats are being sold. - **A land sale that proved the value** - in mid-2022 the company sold 15,394 square metres of its Chandivali land to data-centre operator Equinix for ₹235 crore, demonstrating the underlying worth of its Mumbai land holdings. # Group structure and partners **The company sits inside the Shapoorji Pallonji conglomerate but operates with a lean, debt-free balance sheet and a web of subsidiaries that either support the core businesses or are being wound down.** - **Ultimate parent is a multi-billion-dollar group** - Shapoorji Pallonji and Company Private Limited controls the company and has interests spanning real estate, coal mining, power, ports, roads, biofuels, agriculture, shipping and logistics. - **A core investment company holds the financial stakes** - wholly owned subsidiary Forbes Campbell Finance Limited is an unregistered core investment company with a portfolio of about ₹61 crore, holding investments in the parent company, in the demerged Eureka Forbes and Precision Tools entities, and in a shipping-services joint venture. - **A 51%-owned offshore manning business** - Forbes Bumi Armada Limited, a joint venture of the finance subsidiary, supplies operations and management crews to three floating production storage and offloading vessels, and holds ISO certifications in quality, environment, health and safety, and information security. - **The historic brands have been carved out** - the Eureka Forbes health-and-hygiene business was demerged in early 2022 and sold to Advent International; the Precision Tools division was demerged into a separately listed company in March 2024; and the Lux Group of European subsidiaries was liquidated and dissolved, or disposed of by the bankruptcy official, in FY24 after bankruptcy. - **Other legacy entities are being tidied up** - Forbes Technosys entered insolvency proceedings in March 2025 and is no longer under the company’s control; shipping, facilities-services and hospitality subsidiaries were sold or exited between 2022 and 2023.