HBL Engineering is an Indian company that spots technology gaps - products the country imports or assembles but doesn’t truly make - and fills them by inventing the missing pieces in-house, a discipline it has practised since 1977 when it spent six years developing aircraft batteries for the Indian Air Force. Founded by Dr. A.J. Prasad, an R&D management specialist who believed India’s engineering talent could build what it was buying, the company lives by a single rule: enter only niche markets that are too small for giants and too hard for newcomers, win with proprietary technology, and aim to be number one or two - or don’t play at all. That philosophy has produced a portfolio where the average product takes fifteen years from concept to profit, and where the company builds not just the products but the machines that make them, keeping capital costs low enough to start small. # Business segments Four engines at different stages - a battery cash cow that powers everything from fighter jets to data centres, a rail-signalling platform now scaling across the national network, an electronics and defence workshop turning deep certifications into sole-supplier positions, and an electric-truck bet being assembled from the ground up - each built with the cash flows and engineering muscle of the one before. ## 1. Industrial batteries: the foundation that pays for everything else **HBL makes batteries where failure is not an option - aircraft, submarines, metro trains, data centres - and holds number-one or number-two positions in most of those niches globally or in India.** - **Four chemistries, one logic** - the company produces Lead Acid (VRLA and Pure Lead Thin Plate), Nickel Cadmium, and Lithium-Ion packs, choosing the chemistry that fits each application rather than pushing a single technology. It is the only producer of PLT batteries in India and second in the world, having developed the technology entirely in-house. - **Aircraft batteries started it all** - the first product, chosen in 1977, was sintered-plate nickel-cadmium batteries for Indian Air Force aircraft; today HBL supplies almost every battery the IAF uses, in a global market with only about four other companies. - **Trains and metros need a battery in every coach** - HBL is a recognised supplier for both lead-acid and nickel-cadmium rail batteries, and Siemens-Germany selected it as the OEM supplier for its new RRX coaches, while Siemens-America bought batteries for coaches sold to Canada. Lithium-ion packs made with imported cells and HBL’s own monitoring systems now go into Vande Bharat trains and Siemens metro cars globally. - **Data centres are the growth wedge** - PLT batteries are winning in critical data-centre applications because their safety profile beats lithium where space isn’t the binding constraint, and HBL has already signed a rate contract with a large data-centre operator to supply over thirty months. The Indian data-centre market is expected to double capacity by 2032. - **Submarines and missiles are recurring revenue** - submarine propulsion batteries last about four years and cost roughly ₹15 crore each; HBL and one rival split the Indian Navy’s orders. The company also makes most missile batteries used in India, including for the Agni V, and exports them to Israel and the UAE. ## 2. Rail signalling: the national network’s safety backbone, now scaling **HBL pioneered India’s indigenous train-collision avoidance system and is one of only three approved suppliers for a rollout covering at least 30,000 kilometres of track over the next decade.** - **Twenty years from lab to contract** - R&D on the Kavach Train Collision Avoidance System began in 2005, the first track demonstration happened in 2012, and it became a commercial business only in 2022 when Indian Railways declared it the national automatic train-protection standard. - **The interoperability moat** - three companies are approved to supply Kavach, and their systems must work together; any new entrant faces a long, expensive qualification process to prove interoperability, which protects the incumbents. HBL was the first to earn certification for trains running up to 160 kilometres per hour. - **Orders are measured in kilometres and locomotives** - HBL has won contracts covering 6,980 kilometres of track, 2,425 locomotives, and 758 stations. In FY26 alone, it received orders for on-board Kavach equipment from three locomotive works worth over ₹1,900 crore. - **A niche control-room product on the side** - HBL is the only approved Indian company for Train Management Systems, the master control centres with video walls that help traffic controllers manage disruptions; fewer than two percent of the railway network has one, and each zone eventually needs six to nine systems at ₹40-50 crore apiece. ## 3. Defence and electronics: sole-supplier positions behind walls of certification **Decades of procedure-heavy qualification work have made HBL the leading battery supplier to India’s armed forces and the only company in the country with fully indigenous electronic fuzes - positions that are hard to win and harder to dislodge.** - **Fuzes with zero import content** - HBL spent fifteen years developing electronic fuzes for grenades, artillery shells, and missiles entirely in-house; the two other Indian suppliers import roughly eighty percent of their bill of materials. The company is the only Indian supplier of electronic fuzes for grenades and can sell fuzes to other grenade assemblers too. - **Battlefield communications in six thousand vehicles** - a digital control harness developed with Israel’s ELBIT is installed in nearly 6,000 Indian armoured vehicles, and every new one will use it as original equipment; HBL is the sole Indian supplier of this capital item. - **Submarine consoles for the French-designed Scorpenes** - HBL built the Integrated Platform Management System and steering consoles for four Scorpene-class submarines to the specification of Naval Group of France; all are in operation, though such high-value projects recur only at long intervals. - **Electro-optics through a partnership lens** - HBL has committed up to ₹150 crore in tranches to Tonbo Imaging, which makes the “eyes and brain” of weapons platforms and is deployed in over 25 countries; HBL uses its electronics factories to supply Tonbo and bids directly for large contracts using Tonbo’s technology when the startup isn’t financially eligible to bid alone. ## 4. Electric drive trains and trucks: a greenfield bet on heavy vehicles **HBL is building complete 35-ton and 55-ton electric trucks - motors, controllers, and batteries all made in-house - and plans to sell them directly to fleet operators rather than through established truck manufacturers.** - **Motors without Chinese rare earths** - since 2017, HBL has been developing an alternative high-efficiency traction motor that uses raw materials available in India, sidestepping the fact that China controls more than ninety percent of the world’s rare-earth magnet supply. - **Selling trucks, not just parts** - the company considered selling drive trains to truck makers but concluded it would be low-margin and tedious; instead it is assembling complete trucks using components from existing OEM suppliers and will sell direct to users, a lower-volume but higher-margin path that needs little capital expenditure. - **The savings pitch, not the subsidy pitch** - a truck operator converting an old diesel vehicle to HBL’s electric drive train could save up to ₹1,00,000 a month if conditions are right, and the solution does not depend on government subsidies. - **Charging and marine extensions** - HBL’s sixty-percent-owned subsidiary TTL Electric Fuel already runs 67 charging locations across nine cities, serving about 2,000 vehicles a day, and plans highway stations to support truck customers. A joint venture with Cochin Shipyard, for which a joint venture agreement was executed in 2026, aims to take the same electric-drive know-how into marine propulsion. # Group structure and partners **A family-controlled, near-debt-free listed entity with a web of subsidiaries and partnerships that extend its technology reach without diluting the core engineering model.** - **Founder-led and tightly held** - Dr. A.J. Prasad, the founder with degrees from IIT Kharagpur, MIT, and Columbia, remains Chairman and Managing Director; his daughter Kavita Prasad Aluru has been on the board since 2000, and promoters together hold 59.11 percent. - **Overseas outposts for customer access** - wholly owned subsidiaries in the United States and Germany support business development and, in the German case, the strategic sourcing relationship with Siemens. - **An optics partner held at arm’s length** - HBL owns 11.13 percent of Tonbo Imaging, with a path to roughly 35 percent upon full conversion of its investment; the structure lets HBL supply manufacturing services and bid on large contracts without consolidating a startup’s risk onto its own balance sheet. - **A fund to replicate the model** - the company is setting up Mittelstand Technology Partners, a Category 2 alternative investment fund, to make private-equity-style investments in other small, technology-driven manufacturers, using HBL’s capital and hard-won knowledge of what it takes to fill technology gaps.