Linde India is the business of turning air into industry - it takes the most abundant raw material on earth and separates it into oxygen, nitrogen and argon that steelmakers, hospitals, electronics fabs and soft-drink bottlers cannot function without. The company has been doing this in India since 1935, and today operates as the Indian arm of Linde plc, the global industrial-gas giant formed by the 2018 merger of Linde AG and Praxair. The recurring approach is simple: build enormous, capital-hungry air-separation plants next to a big anchor customer that signs a long-term contract, then sell the excess liquid gases to thousands of smaller buyers across the region - the anchor pays for the plant, the merchant business delivers the profit.
Business segments
Three engines at different stages - a gases business that is the cash cow, a project-engineering division that builds the plants, and a quiet capability backbone that moves the product - each feeding the others.
1. Gases and related products: the core industrial-gas utility
It owns and operates more than two dozen air-separation plants across India, sells the output through three delivery channels - onsite pipeline, bulk cryogenic tanker and packaged cylinders - and earns its best returns by building density around its plants so that every additional kilometre of delivery radius adds customers faster than it adds cost.
- Air is the raw material - the primary production of oxygen, nitrogen and argon happens through cryogenic distillation of atmospheric air in Air Separation Units, or ASUs (the plants that chill air until its components liquefy and can be drawn off separately), which means the feedstock is free and the moat is the plant itself.
- Onsite anchors pay for the plant - large steel, glass and chemical customers such as Tata Steel, SAIL and Jindal Stainless sign long-term agreements under which Linde builds a dedicated ASU at their factory gate and pipes gas directly in; the company recently signed a 15-year deal with ESL Steel (a Vedanta group company) for 800 tonnes per day of oxygen and 900 tonnes per day of nitrogen at Bokaro, and commissioned a new 1,450-tonnes-per-day ASU for Jindal Stainless at Kalinganagar.
- Merchant liquid fills the trucks - excess gas from onsite plants and output from standalone merchant ASUs is liquefied and delivered by cryogenic tanker to mid-sized buyers in metals, glass, automobiles, pharmaceuticals and food processing; the company travels roughly 1.7 million kilometres a month across its fleet, with a 24/7 control room and AI-enabled fatigue cameras on every vehicle.
- Packaged gas reaches the small user - compressed gases in cylinders serve fabrication shops, construction sites and local hospitals; the company operates cylinder-filling plants across the country, including an all-women facility at Trichy, and expanded its western-India footprint by acquiring the packaged-gas business of HPS Gases in Vadodara.
- Healthcare is a specialty within the segment - medical oxygen, nitrous oxide and proprietary products such as ENTONOX (a pain-relief gas mixture) and NOxBOXi (a nitric-oxide therapy system for newborns) are supplied to hospitals, backed by 22 PSA oxygen plants and a growing medical-gas pipeline installation business that is pushing into Tier-II and Tier-III cities.
2. Project Engineering Division: the plant-builder that also supplies itself
It designs and builds the air-separation units, nitrogen generators and cryogenic storage tanks that the gases business runs - and sells the same equipment to external steelmakers, refiners and research labs, giving it a captive customer for its own engineering output.
- Turnkey plant builder - PED takes a contract from design through commissioning for medium-to-large ASUs (40 to 2,550 tonnes per day), nitrogen plants, PSA systems and complete gas-distribution networks, serving customers from SAIL and Tata to ONGC and the Dahej LNG terminal.
- Order book provides visibility - as of March 2025 the division carried an order book of over Rs 20,000 million, having secured roughly Rs 7,000 million in fresh third-party and inter-company orders during the year, plus another Rs 3,370 million of in-house project orders from the gases business.
- Makes its own critical equipment - a U-stamp-certified workshop in Kolkata and an expanded facility at Jamshedpur manufacture distillation columns, cryogenic liquid storage tanks, vaporisers and cold boxes, both for PED's own projects and for sale to outside buyers; the Jamshedpur unit alone secured orders for 39 vessels in its first year of production.
- Exports to five countries - the division ships plants and equipment to Bangladesh, Malaysia, Indonesia, etc., with export revenue of about Rs 588 million in the 15-month period to March 2023.
Distribution and logistics backbone
A national fleet of cryogenic tankers, cylinder trucks and digitally monitored vehicles - moving roughly 1.7 million kilometres a month - turns a collection of plants into a single delivery network that no small competitor can replicate.
- Centralised control - a Transport Operating Centre and National Scheduling Centre at the Kolkata head office manage tanker movements and scheduling across the country, while a 24/7 customer-service centre with interactive voice response handles orders and complaints.
- Efficiency engineered in - tonnes delivered per trip improved 5% year-on-year, capacity utilisation of tankers rose 2%, and return or loss of product was held to a 1% average, helped by a machine-learning distance-measurement tool and a logistics-management system.
Group structure and partners
Linde India is a debt-free, 75%-held subsidiary of Linde plc with no subsidiaries of its own, two joint ventures and a geography-sharing agreement with its fellow subsidiary Praxair India that splits the country's industrial-gas market between them.
- Zero borrowings - the company has carried no outstanding debt for at least five consecutive years, and voluntarily withdrew its CRISIL AA long-term credit rating in 2021 because it no longer needed one.
- Market split with Praxair India - under a 2020 joint-venture agreement, new merchant gas business is divided by region: Linde India takes the East, North and most of the West, while Praxair India takes the South, Central India and industrial bulk in Maharashtra; the project-engineering business is pursued solely by Linde India.
- Shared-services JV - Linde South Asia Services, a 50:50 venture with Praxair India, provides procurement, safety, HR, finance, IT and sales support to both partners on an arm's-length basis, so neither company needs to duplicate back-office functions.