Onward Technologies is an outsourced engineering partner that helps the world’s largest industrial and automotive manufacturers design their next-generation products - from electric motors to smart factory software - without having to build those digital and engineering teams themselves. Founded in 1991 as a traditional Indian IT services firm, the company pivoted decisively after 2016 under second-generation leadership, shedding low-margin domestic work to focus entirely on high-tech engineering R&D (ER&D) and digital transformation for global original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) in North America and Europe. The recurring approach that explains everything else is a deliberate obsession with depth over breadth: a compact roster of roughly 50-75 deep client relationships, each representing a tiny slice of a massive R&D budget, with the company methodically expanding its share of that wallet by embedding engineers directly into the client’s critical product-development path.
Business segments
Three industry verticals, all served by the same integrated engineering engine - a heavy-machinery anchor that generates nearly two-thirds of revenue, a scaled automotive practice, and a small healthcare bet for the future.
1. Industrial Equipment & Heavy Machinery: the anchor vertical where the company’s deepest domain expertise lives
Five of the world’s top eight heavy machinery companies already rely on Onward for product design and smart-factory engineering, and those relationships create a referral flywheel that brings in new clients from the same industry.
- Product engineering for the physical world - the company designs new equipment, manages supply chains, and develops the embedded control systems and IoT connectivity that turn traditional machines into connected, data-generating assets, spanning construction, agriculture, mining, and power generation.
- Deepest client roster in the portfolio - as early as FY22, the vertical already served five of the global top eight heavy machinery firms, and management says these flagship clients actively refer Onward to other large industrial companies, making the client base itself a source of new business.
- A thirty-year mechanical engineering backbone - the company’s mechanical engineering practice, which has existed for three decades, forms a substantial portion of revenues here, providing the product engineering and design-change services that industrial OEMs need across long equipment lifecycles.
- Offshore delivery at scale - in mid-2025, the company opened its largest Indian design centre in Chennai to serve global industrial clients, with plans to grow that single location to 2,000 engineers, while a dedicated offshore development centre for a global power-management company was signed in mid-2026 to support its data-centre segment.
2. Transportation & Mobility: the automotive engineering practice built on electrification and software-defined vehicles
Eight of the world’s top eleven automotive companies use Onward to develop the embedded software, electric powertrains, and validation systems that define the next generation of vehicles - and the company has the patents to prove it.
- Software on the critical path - the vertical delivers embedded software services aligned with clients’ most urgent development timelines, covering everything from AUTOSAR middleware and bootloaders to over-the-air update systems and software-defined vehicle architectures.
- Patented electric-motor design - Onward is among the few firms globally to have successfully implemented hairpin winding design for e-powertrain motors, achieving 98% efficiency on its IPM motors and an 80% reduction in AC losses, work that led a Tier-1 client to file six patents based on the company’s designs.
- A dedicated embedded lab in Pune - the company invested in a state-of-the-art electronics lab that supports development and testing for powertrain engine control units, ASICS firmware across gasoline, diesel, hybrid and electric vehicles, and boot-loader software, serving automotive as well as off-highway and medical clients.
- Rail as a niche second engine - a smaller rail-transportation practice supports locomotive manufacturers with design, cost engineering, and strategic sourcing of parts across casting, forging, and fabrication, saving clients roughly $20 million annually through value-analysis work.
3. Healthcare & Life Sciences: the small, early-stage bet on medical-device engineering
A vertical that today contributes just a sliver of revenue but is described by management as having “unlimited potential to grow over the next 5 to 10 years,” built on the same mechanical, embedded, and digital skills that power the company’s larger engines.
- Full lifecycle medical-device engineering - the vertical designs new medical products, develops electrical and control systems, and provides verification, validation, and aftermarket support, all while navigating FDA and CE regulatory submissions and environmental compliance requirements.
- A decade-long anchor client - the company has a ten-year partnership with a leading Swedish medical-equipment manufacturer, and has executed specific projects such as engineering design for biological safety cabinets and lab freezers for a US-based life-sciences company, and reverse-engineering an entire hospital bed for a US medical-technology firm.
- Digital health adjacency - beyond physical device engineering, the vertical applies cloud, DevOps, and data-analytics capabilities - including natural-language processing and large language models - to healthcare applications, alongside smart-factory enablement for pharma and medical-equipment production.
Integrated engineering engine: Digital, Embedded, and Mechanical
Every vertical draws on the same three pools of engineering talent - roughly half mechanical, half software-led - deployed from design centres in India and project offices next to clients in North America and Europe.
- Mechanical engineering, the thirty-year foundation - the company’s mechanical practice handles new product design, virtual simulation, value engineering, and manufacturing engineering, with engineering centres in Pune and Hyderabad already running at over 90% utilisation.
- Embedded and electronics, the bridge between physical and digital - platform services span hardware and software, connectivity solutions, product modernisation, and verification and validation, supported by dedicated labs and a Centre of Excellence in Bengaluru built for mobility clients.
- A deliberate phase-out of low-margin IT - traditional IT services, which had already been reduced to about 2% of revenue by FY24, have been systematically exited so that the entire company is now focused on these three future-ready engineering capabilities.
Group structure and partners
A listed Indian holding company with five wholly owned international subsidiaries that serve as local delivery and sales vehicles in the US, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands, plus a property subsidiary that owns the company’s Pune delivery centre.
- International subsidiaries mirror the client map - Onward Technologies Inc. (USA), Onward Technologies GmbH (Germany), Onward Technologies Canada Inc., and Onward Technologies BV (Netherlands) were established to provide local engineering services and sales presence in the company’s two core markets, North America and Europe.
- OT Park Private Limited owns the real estate - acquired in December 2021, this Indian subsidiary holds a single property in Pune that was already leased by the company, now serving as a dedicated offshore delivery centre and a centralised hub for the transportation and mobility segment.
- A streamlined corporate history - legacy entities including a domestic IT-services subsidiary and an inactive property company have been merged or struck off, while a 2023 court-sanctioned demerger moved the promoter’s shareholding into a single entity with no change in control.
- Founder-led, professionally managed - founder Harish Mehta serves as Executive Chairman and his son Jigar Mehta as Managing Director, both re-appointed for five-year terms through 2031, while a newly formed global leadership team of business and corporate-function leaders runs day-to-day operations.