Kirloskar Brothers Limited is India’s first and largest pump manufacturer, a 137-year-old industrial house that began by making iron ploughs and centrifugal pumps and has since narrowed its focus entirely to fluid management - moving water and other liquids for everything from irrigation and drinking water to nuclear power plants and the world’s tallest buildings. The company was built by repeatedly spinning off non-pump businesses - machine tools, electrical equipment, engines, compressors - between 1941 and 1958, then expanding globally through a series of acquisitions in the UK, USA, Netherlands and South Africa. The recurring approach that explains the business is a deliberate shift away from lumpy, working-capital-heavy project contracts toward a mix of made-to-stock products, engineered-to-order systems, and recurring service and subscription revenue, all supported by in-house foundries, proprietary digital tools, and a manufacturing footprint spread across four continents. # Business segments Three engines at different stages - a domestic pump-and-systems cash cow, an international network of acquired specialists, and a set of domestic subsidiaries that feed the parent with motors, coatings and oil-and-gas pumps - each built with the cash flows of the one before. ## 1. Domestic pumps, valves and systems: the core engine that supplies over a third of India’s drinking water **A single Indian factory can test a pump as powerful as 30 MW, and the company sells everything from a farmer’s borewell pump off the shelf to a custom-built nuclear coolant pump - with service contracts that keep revenue coming long after installation.** - **Made-to-stock is the steady heartbeat** - over half the standalone product mix is made-to-stock, so this portion carries no pending order book and turns cash quickly. - **Engineered orders bring the heft** - the remaining mix is split between made-to-order and engineered-to-order pumps, including pumps for India’s nuclear power programme and the boiler feed water pumps that keep thermal power plants running. - **Projects deliberately shrunk to a sliver** - EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) contracts have been cut from three-quarters of revenue in 2010 to just 3% today, because management views them as low-margin and working-capital-hungry; only KBL Standalone touches them at all. - **After-sales is the quiet compounder** - long-term framework contracts lasting three to five years, annual maintenance contracts, and a proprietary IoT subscription platform called KirloSmart™ turn one-time pump sales into recurring revenue streams, with the subscription model designed to eventually absorb all existing service contracts. - **Channel partners do half the selling** - 16,200-plus partners across India contributed 52% of business revenues, supported by 650 authorised service centres and five regional APOEM facilities that keep the full pump-and-motor range available ex-stock. ## 2. International operations: a federation of acquired specialists held through a Dutch holding company **Seven manufacturing sites across the UK, USA, Netherlands and South Africa give the group local-currency revenue, local-content compliance, and a fire-pump business that leads its market globally - all while the parent guarantees their bank lines from India.** - **SPP Pumps UK is the crown jewel** - with 145 years of heritage, it holds the highest market share in fire pump packages worldwide and was the first to offer Factory Mutual approved multi-stage multi-outlet pumps for high-rise fire protection; 70% of its UK production is exported, and the product/service mix stands at 62% products and 38% services. - **The American arm rides data-centre demand** - SPP Pumps Inc and SyncroFlo Inc together supply pre-packaged pumping systems and fire pumps, gaining recognition from Google, AWS and Microsoft, and have expanded into South America and Canada. - **Dutch and South African units cover niche ground** - Rodelta in the Netherlands makes API-standard pumps for oil and gas midstream and fish-friendly pumps for ecological applications, while the South African cluster manufactures slurry pumps for copper, gold and uranium mines and has been turned around after overcoming local empowerment regulations. - **Local presence is the compliance moat** - subsidiaries in the US, UK and Netherlands meet local sourcing norms including Buy American and BBBEE in South Africa, performing repair, maintenance and component-level value addition that a pure exporter could not match. ## 3. Domestic subsidiaries and joint ventures: the backyard supply chain and the oil-and-gas specialist **Two wholly owned units make the motors, stampings and anti-corrosion coatings that go into KBL’s pumps, while a 45% joint venture with Japan’s Ebara Corporation covers the downstream oil-and-gas pump market that the parent does not.** - **KCPL coats against corrosion** - the 65% subsidiary with Corrocoat Ltd UK applies glass-flake polymer coatings on pumps, valves and pipelines, running a high-margin order book with an EBITDA margin above 22%. - **KEPL plugs the downstream oil-and-gas gap** - the Ebara joint venture makes API-610 centrifugal pumps and steam turbines for refineries, pipelines and LNG plants, complementing SPP Pumps’ upstream focus and Rodelta’s midstream position so the group covers the full hydrocarbon value chain. # Manufacturing and technology backbone **One of Asia’s largest hydraulic research centres, a 3-D printer for foundry moulds, and a proprietary machine-learning algorithm called Dolphin sit inside a factory network that pours over 11,000 tonnes of metal a year - and the company is wiring all of it to a remote-monitoring platform that predicts pump failures before they happen.** - **Kirloskarvadi is the mother plant** - established in 1910, it houses foundry, machining, assembly and testing for pumps up to 30 MW and valves up to 5 metres in diameter, with a NABL- and Hydraulic Institute-accredited test bed that can push 50,000 cubic metres of water per hour through a pump under test. - **Digital tools run alongside the iron** - Dolphin automates analysis of historical and live pump data, KirloSmart™ lets customers monitor pumps remotely from a smartphone, and an AI-enabled tender tool called Apollo speeds up documentation; the company even uses augmented and virtual reality to train service engineers. - **The foundry prints its own moulds** - the world’s largest 3-D printer for foundries, installed in 2013, produces moulds and cores for casting pump components, cutting turnaround time for the service business and letting the company re-engineer parts for pumps that are decades old. - **Pumps that generate power** - the PICO and PAT pump models can run in reverse as turbines, and together with customers they have generated 9,500 MW of green energy, avoiding close to seven million tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. # Group structure and partners **The Kirloskar name is governed by a 1947 agreement that separates pumps from oil engines, and a 2009 family settlement that divided the industrial group into three branches - KBL’s branch now controls a Dutch holding company, two domestic subsidiaries, and a joint venture with Ebara, all backed by corporate guarantees from the parent.** - **The family settlement split the empire** - a 2009 deed divided the Kirloskar Group among three family branches, with Sanjay Kirloskar’s branch taking KBL, Kirloskar Corrocoat, and the Ebara joint venture, while other branches took Kirloskar Oil Engines and Kirloskar Pneumatic. - **A 1947 agreement still defines the brand** - KBL sold the right to use “KIRLOSKAR” on oil engines to Kirloskar Oil Engines, which in turn agreed never to use the name on anything KBL manufactures; the trademark is held jointly through Kirloskar Proprietary Ltd, where the branches must hold equal shares. - **The Dutch BV holds key international assets** - Kirloskar Brothers International B.V. in the Netherlands is the 100% parent of several overseas subsidiaries, from SPP Pumps in the UK to the South African mining-pump cluster, with the parent issuing corporate guarantees in pounds, euros and dollars to secure their local credit lines. - **A recent merger simplified the steel-casting leg** - The Kolhapur Steel Limited (TKSL), a heavy-casting pioneer since 1965, was merged into KPML in December 2025 to consolidate manufacturing and free up surplus land under direct KBL control.