Orissa Bengal Carrier Ltd - now OBCL Ltd - is a road transport company that has spent three decades moving bulk industrial freight across India from its base in Chhattisgarh, a state that produces roughly 30% of the country’s steel and sponge iron and 20% of its cement. Founded in 1994 by the late Ratan Kumar Agrawal with the idea of reaching even the most unexplored regions, it listed on the SME exchange in 2018 and graduated to the main boards of BSE and NSE in 2022. The recurring approach is an asset-light, hub-and-spoke model: the company owns a small core fleet but hires most of its trucks locally, keeping costs variable while serving a roster of large industrial customers on time-bound contracts. # Business segments Two engines at different stages - a road-transportation workhorse that moves more than a million tonnes a year for India’s steel and cement industries, and a small trading venture that uses the same logistics backbone to buy and sell coal, sand and steel. ## 1. Road transportation: the industrial freight backbone **The company moves bulk raw materials and finished goods for some of India’s largest steel, cement and metals producers, using mostly hired trucks on a network of 41 branches that connect all four regions of the country.** - **More hired trucks than owned** - the company keeps a fleet of 70 commercial vehicles of its own and hires roughly 500 more from local markets wherever it operates, a deliberate shift from an earlier owned fleet of 117 vehicles that management believes improves efficiency and cuts operating costs. - **Paid by the tonne, the trip or the truck** - contracts are flexible and can be priced per dedicated truck, per trip, per tonne, per tonne-per-kilometre, per kilogram, or as a cost-plus management fee, so the company can match the billing to whatever the customer’s shipment pattern demands. - **The customer list reads like the core sector** - named clients include Vedanta, Jindal Steel & Power, Tata Steel, SAIL, Ambuja Cement, Reliance Industries, Shree Cement, Dabur and Godrej, and the company has won tenders such as a Rs. 100 crore contract with Jindal Stainless to move about 3 lakh tonnes over two years. - **A hub-and-spoke network with 41 branches** - goods move through branches spread across India that give customers multiple booking and delivery points, with routes connecting the western, eastern, southern and northern regions; the branch count has been streamlined from a peak of 55 to the current 41. - **Working-capital hungry by design** - corporate clients get 60-90 days to pay, while the company gets only 18-25 days from its own creditors, and fuel costs for both owned and hired vehicles must be paid upfront, making the working-capital cycle 60-80 days. ## 2. Trading: a small bolt-on that rides the same trucks **A wholly-owned subsidiary buys and sells coal, sand, iron and steel to domestic buyers, using the parent’s existing logistics framework to move the goods.** - **Born in mid-2024** - OBCL Ventures Private Limited was incorporated on 4 June 2024 and acquired with the stated purpose of diversifying the business by putting the company’s transport network to work on its own trading book. - **Scaled up quickly with a rights issue** - in February 2025 the board approved an additional Rs. 5.99 crore equity infusion into the subsidiary to meet its short- and long-term funding needs. - **Land and logistics parks are on the horizon** - in late 2023 the company amended its constitutional documents to permit dealing in land and constructing logistic parks, business parks, solar parks and warehouses, signalling an ambition to build physical infrastructure beyond pure trucking. # Group structure and partners **The company is tightly held by the founding family, with the Managing Director owning nearly all the shares after a family settlement in late 2025.** - The late Ratan Kumar Agrawal’s family and the late Sajjan Kumar Agrawal’s family were the two promoter branches; a Family Settlement Agreement dated 19 December 2025 transferred the majority of the Sajjan Kumar family’s shares to the Ratan Kumar family, along with two 14-wheeler trucks moving the other way. - As of 31 March 2026, the listed individual shareholders held 99,16,015 shares out of the total 2,10,82,790 equity shares outstanding, with Managing Director Ravi Agrawal personally holding 98,91,015 of those and actively buying more through on-market purchases during FY26. - Shares are listed on both BSE and NSE, with Bigshare Services Pvt. Ltd. as the registrar and share transfer agent, and banking relationships with HDFC Bank and Axis Bank.