DCM Ltd is a 135-year-old Indian industrial house that has spent the last five years dismantling itself and rebuilding around two entirely different engines. Once a maker of grey-iron auto castings and cotton textiles, the company demerged its textile business in 2019 and has since been locked out of its own foundry by labour unrest, forcing a pivot into IT infrastructure services and independent real estate development. The recurring approach is one of triage and transfer: ring-fence a legacy problem, move a viable business into a clean subsidiary, and use whatever cash and land the old balance sheet still holds to fund the next chapter. # Business segments Two engines at opposite ends of the lifecycle - a suspended grey-iron foundry that once fed the auto industry, and an IT services subsidiary that is now the group's going concern - alongside a land-development bet waiting on a regulatory green light. ## 1. IT Infrastructure Services: the group's new operating heart **DCM Infotech, the wholly owned subsidiary, sells networking, cloud and AI services to clients in India and the US - it is now the half of the business that actually runs.** - **Born from a slump sale** - the IT division was carved out of the parent and vested in DCM Infotech Limited as a going concern in September 2019, so it operates with a clean corporate structure separate from the legacy foundry's liabilities. - **Sells expertise, not products** - the subsidiary specialises in managed IT infrastructure services: networking, analytics, cloud and digital technologies, which means it runs and optimises the technology backbone for other companies. - **Chasing the AI wave** - over the past year it has aggressively built capabilities in Gen AI, automation and cyber security, and is investing in Agent AI offerings because it sees large growth potential in AI-driven IT operations across both the US and India. - **A foot in two markets** - it operates in India and the US, and in mid-2025 incorporated a step-down subsidiary in America to retain existing contracts, win government and large-enterprise business, and hire local talent on the ground. - **Pricing is a fistfight** - entry barriers in Indian IT are very low, so competitors routinely undercut on price even in newer areas like automation, which forces the subsidiary to chase sticky, multi-year managed-services contracts that build a backlog of revenue over three to four years. ## 2. Grey Iron Casting: the suspended foundry **A once-operational auto-components foundry in Punjab that has produced nothing since October 2019 because of a labour lockout - it is a legacy asset in legal limbo.** - **Made the metal bones of vehicles** - the division manufactured ferrous and non-ferrous castings for cars, tractors, light and heavy commercial vehicles, and earth-moving equipment, including engine components like cylinder heads and blocks, and braking parts like brake drums. - **Locked out for over five years** - the company declared a lockout in October 2019 after years of go-slows, strikes and violence by workers, and the matter remains before labour authorities with no production since that date. - **Shrunk before it stopped** - in its last operating year, production had already collapsed to 15,271 tonnes from 46,615 tonnes the year before, and the workforce has been whittled down from 802 people to 530 through attrition during the lockout. - **A restructuring that never happened** - a plan relating to restructuring of the Engineering Business and outstanding loans and liabilities was approved in 2019 but later withdrawn after the company settled its bank dues, and the board is now evaluating fresh options while keeping the factory in basic upkeep. - **Land is the residual value** - the division holds land parcels in Tamil Nadu and Punjab that are classified as held for sale, so even in shutdown the real estate on its books has potential worth. ## 3. Real Estate: the land-bank option **The company is trying to convert its 68-acre land parcel in Hisar, Haryana, into an affordable plotted colony through a joint-development deal - but the project's licence is suspended.** - **Someone else builds, DCM collects a share** - under the joint development agreement with developer GCD Prime, the partner bears all construction and marketing costs, and DCM Ltd receives 55% of the net sale revenue from the plotted colony. - **Designed as affordable housing** - the project was licensed under the Deen Dayal Jan Awas Yojana, a state policy for affordable residential colonies, covering about 67 acres of the Hisar land. - **Stuck at the starting line** - the town-planning authority suspended the licence in April 2023 after the Deputy Commissioner initiated an enquiry into the land, and the real estate regulator has kept the project registration in abeyance, so no development or sales can proceed. - **A second, older land play exists** - the company is the title holder of land at Bara Hindu Rao in Delhi, where development rights were vested with a joint venture under a court-approved restructuring scheme, and that land has been mortgaged for project loans that have been steadily repaid. # Group structure and partners **The parent company sits atop a stack of mostly dormant subsidiaries, with one material operating entity - DCM Infotech - and an associate real-estate venture.** - DCM Infotech Limited is the material wholly owned subsidiary that runs the IT services business, and it has its own US subsidiary, DCM Infotech Solution Inc, USA, which became a subsidiary of DCM Infotech Limited w.e.f. July 03, 2025, making it a step-down subsidiary of the parent. - Four other wholly owned subsidiaries - DCM Landmark Estates, DCM Infinity Realtors, DCM Engineering, and DCM Realty and Infrastructure - are not carrying out any business operations, and the board has initiated the process to strike off two of them. - Purearth Infrastructure Limited is an associate company in which DCM Ltd holds a 16.56% stake; it is in the real-estate construction business, and one of the promoter directors also works as its whole-time director while holding a larger personal stake. - The cotton textile business was fully demerged into DCM Nouvelle Limited in 2019, with DCM Ltd shareholders receiving one share of the new entity for every share they held, so the textile legacy is now a completely separate listed company.