Jindal Drilling & Industries is fundamentally a service company that rents out floating drilling platforms and the crews to run them, almost entirely to India’s state-owned oil giant. It was founded in 1983 and spent its first three decades as a middleman, chartering rigs from others, but over the last decade it has executed a deliberate pivot to owning its own steel - buying its first rig in 2019, a second in 2021, and a third in 2025. The recurring approach that explains everything else is a conservative, cash-first philosophy: the company avoids debt, funds refurbishments and acquisitions from its own reserves, and buys used rigs at a discount rather than ordering new ones that cost upwards of a quarter-billion dollars.
Business segments
Two engines, one dominant and one ancillary - a core fleet of offshore drilling rigs that generates nearly all the revenue, and a small onshore technical-services unit that rides alongside.
1. Offshore drilling: a day-rate business on India’s continental shelf
The company owns and operates a fleet of six jack-up rigs, each contracted to ONGC for a fixed daily fee in US dollars - it gets paid for the day the rig works, not for the oil that comes out.
- Paid by the day, in dollars - every rig operates under a multi-year contract with a fixed operating day rate, meaning JDIL earns a set fee for each day the rig is available and working, with revenue recognized net of taxes and any penalties. The current contract portfolio, as of late 2025, locks in day rates ranging from roughly USD 35,600 to USD 88,900 across five active rigs, with an order book of about USD 130 million.
- One customer dominates - ONGC, India’s state-owned exploration company, is described as the company’s “only customer” for its rigs, a relationship built over 30 years of continuous service. Demand for JDIL’s rigs rises and falls with ONGC’s tendering cycle, which itself depends on government energy policy and global oil prices.
- The fleet is a mix of owned and rented steel - of the six jack-up rigs, three are owned (Discovery-I, Jindal Supreme, and Jindal Pioneer) and three are chartered from joint ventures or third parties (Virtue-I, Jindal Star, Jindal Explorer). The company’s strategy is to gradually convert rented rigs into owned ones by buying them from the secondary market, as it did with Jindal Supreme in 2021 for USD 16.75 million and Jindal Pioneer in 2025 for USD 75 million, both paid for with internal cash.
- Refurbishment is the hidden cost of every contract - at the end of each multi-year charter, a rig must undergo a major overhaul, or “dry docking,” to meet updated safety standards, costing anywhere from INR 50 crore to INR 120 crore per rig. These costs are not written off immediately but are spread over the life of the next contract, which smooths out earnings.
- Operational efficiency is the moat - the company’s rigs ran at over 99% efficiency during FY24, a performance level that ONGC itself has called “Exemplary”. JDIL argues that its rigs are purpose-maintained for Indian offshore conditions, and that no new rigs are being built to suit those requirements, giving its existing fleet a defensive advantage against foreign competitors.
2. Mud logging and directional drilling: a small onshore add-on
These are technical services that monitor what is happening down the wellbore and steer the drill bit - good-margin businesses, but too small to scale.
- Eyes and ears on the drill bit - mud logging involves continuously recording data about the rock formations being drilled through, while directional drilling provides the tools to drill at angles rather than straight down, both operating onshore. During FY24, the company ran an average of 16 mud logging units and 8 directional drilling sets.
- Anchored by a long-term contract - the mud logging business has historically operated under a 5-year contract from ONGC covering 22 units, providing a stable, if modest, revenue stream.
- Not a growth engine - management has stated plainly that while these divisions earn good margins, they are “not scalable” and the maximum earnings power of the company comes from the rig segment.
Group structure and partners
The company uses two Singapore-based joint ventures as rig-holding vehicles, leasing their assets and consolidating the revenue, while keeping the JV partners’ profit share below the operating line.
- Two associate companies own the chartered rigs - Discovery Drilling Pte. Ltd. and Virtue Drilling Pte. Limited, both incorporated in Singapore, each 49%-owned by JDIL. These entities own rigs that JDIL takes on charter and then sub-contracts to ONGC, meaning the full contract revenue appears in JDIL’s top line, while the joint ventures’ share of profit is accounted for separately.
- The JVs are also a source of future acquisitions - the company has already bought one rig, Jindal Pioneer, from Discovery Drilling for USD 75 million in 2025, and has indicated it is open to buying more rigs from its own joint ventures if the price is right.
- Loans flow between the entities - JDIL has extended US dollar-denominated loans to these joint ventures, creating a financial link beyond the equity stake.