L.T. Elevator is fundamentally a company that moves people and cars vertically, but its real story is a deliberate pivot from being a regional project contractor to building a national consumer brand. It started in 2008 as a business-to-business elevator manufacturer in East India and, in a single transformative year, listed on the stock exchange and agreed to merge with Ricardo Elevators, a direct-to-consumer home elevator brand, to put its manufacturing muscle behind a retail front-end. The recurring approach is to use in-house manufacturing and a pan-India branch network to offer something regional competitors cannot - a full stack, from factory floor to living room, that captures both large government contracts and individual homeowners. # Business segments Two engines at different stages - a project-based elevator and car-parking contractor that builds the order book, and a fast-spinning direct-to-consumer home elevator brand being bolted on to reach individual households across India. ## 1. Project elevators and car parking: the order-book backbone **Large, slow-paying government and developer contracts provide the ballast of committed work, while a network of 21 branches ensures no regional player can match its national reach.** - **Built on multi-year government contracts** - the company wins turn-key EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) jobs for multi-level car parking and elevators in smart-city projects, such as the INR43 crore Shillong parking project, the largest of its kind in North East India. These milestone-based contracts come with no advance payment and bills that take 3-4 months to clear, so they lock in years of work but demand patience on cash. - **Serves India’s biggest developers** - for private-sector car parking, the customer list includes pan-India names like Tata Realty and Godrej, alongside smaller regional builders. Large developers typically pay nothing upfront, releasing 50-60% only after the product is shipped to site, which means the company must fund production itself until delivery. - **A branch network that regional rivals cannot copy** - the company runs 21 domestic branch offices, putting it within 400-500 km of any customer in India. Management describes the competitive landscape as fragmented: “an L.T. Elevator equivalent in North India and West India, four equivalents in South India,” but none with the same national footprint or in-house manufacturing. - **Car parking is nearly half the committed work** - as of May 2026, mechanical car parking projects made up roughly 45% of the combined executable order book, with the remaining 55% coming from elevators. The parking business, run through the wholly-owned subsidiary LT ParkSmart, is actively evaluating an international acquisition of a patent-holding rotary-parking company to add technology and Western-market distribution. ## 2. Direct-to-consumer home elevators: the retail growth engine **A compact elevator sold to individual homeowners through Instagram and experience centres, with cash collected mostly before production begins - the opposite of the project business.** - **Sold online, closed in person** - the Ricardo Elevators brand generates nearly 100% of its leads through Meta Ads, pulling in 2,000-2,500 enquiries a month from homeowners. Those leads are converted by lifestyle consultants in 18-21 experience centres across India, where customers can see and customise a product designed for up to four passengers and 3-4 stops in a private home - a niche the large elevator companies ignore. - **Cash comes in before the elevator is built** - the payment structure is designed to protect working capital: 30% on order, another 20-25% on drawing approval, taking the total to 50-55% before production starts, and 90% by the time the elevator is invoiced after manufacturing. The final 10% is collected on installation, making the cycle positive for the company rather than a drain. - **A fast-turning model bolted onto a slow one** - a home elevator order moves from booking to handover in 5-7 months, compared with the longer, milestone-driven timelines of government and developer projects. Ricardo was generating order inflows of about INR6 crore per month in early 2026, with its order book growing from INR45 crore to INR70-80 crore in a single quarter, and the combined entity aims to exit FY27 at a run-rate of over 100 B2C elevators per month. # Group structure and partners **A parent company with a wholly-owned parking subsidiary and a soon-to-be-merged consumer brand, all being pulled onto a single manufacturing base in West Bengal.** - L.T. Elevator Limited is the listed parent, headquartered in Kolkata, with the promoters holding roughly 63% and the public about 37% before the Ricardo merger. - Park Smart Solutions Ltd. is a wholly-owned subsidiary that executes the multi-level car parking contracts under the “Park Smart” brand; the parent infused INR8 crore into it from IPO proceeds in October 2025 to fund working capital. - **Ricardo Elevators Private Limited, the Hyderabad-based D2C home elevator brand, is being merged into the parent under a binding term sheet approved in January 2026, with the merger application not possible until end of May 2026 and dilution to existing shareholders in the very low single digits.** - A new integrated factory is being built on a 6.5-acre land parcel in Howrah, West Bengal - adjacent to a separate parcel bought by the parking subsidiary - designed to lift installed capacity by roughly 2.5 times and support a top line of INR350-400 crores, with commissioning targeted for Q4 FY27.