Siemens Ltd is India’s foremost industrial technology company - it designs a factory, builds its electrical backbone, automates its production lines, and then connects the whole thing to software that monitors every machine in real time. Born as the Indian arm of the German engineering giant Siemens AG, the company reshaped itself through a series of deliberate moves: it bought a local electrical equipment maker to deepen its domestic manufacturing, carved out and sold a commoditised motors business, and spun off its entire energy division into a separate listed entity - all to concentrate on a single idea. That idea, which it calls a “ONE Tech Company,” is to bridge the gap between India’s average factory productivity of roughly 75% and the near-perfect 99.99% achieved at its reference plant in Germany, by selling integrated packages of hardware, software, and process know-how rather than standalone products.
Business segments
Three engines at different stages - a project-driven mobility giant under construction, a locally manufactured electrical infrastructure platform, and a high-margin automation brain built on German technology - each feeding the next with cash and customer access.
1. Mobility: the locomotive that pulls the order book
A single 11-year contract to build and maintain 1,200 freight locomotives for Indian Railways has transformed this business into a multi-decade revenue stream, with each locomotive paid for in full the moment it leaves the factory.
- The 9,000-horsepower anchor - the largest single order in the company’s history, received in FY23, covers the design, manufacture, commissioning, and 35 years of full-service maintenance for 1,200 locomotives assembled at the Indian Railways factory in Dahod, Gujarat. The first 40 locomotives were delivered by March 2026, with output now ramping from 80 per year to 100 from 2028 to 2030, and then to 160 from 2030 to 2035, and over 90% of components were localised within roughly two years.
- Metro systems as the next layer - the company is building a new metro train manufacturing facility at Aurangabad with an investment of ₹1.9 billion, while already electrifying metro lines across Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, and Surat, and equipping the Kolkata underwater metro - India’s first - with rail electrification technologies.
- High-speed rail entry - in mid-2025, a consortium including Siemens Ltd won the contract for advanced signalling and telecommunications on India’s first high-speed rail corridor between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, with the company’s share at ₹1,230 crore for design, installation, and 15 years of maintenance, using European Train Control System Level 2 technology designed for speeds up to 350 km/h.
2. Smart Infrastructure: the electrical backbone of India’s building boom
Roughly two-thirds of what this business sells is made in its own Indian factories, insulating it from currency swings while it supplies everything from the circuit breakers in a hotel wall to the substation that powers an entire data centre.
- Bought, not just built - the acquisition of C&S Electric, closed during financial year 2021 after receiving Competition Commission of India approval on August 20, 2020, brought a full range of low-voltage switchboards, protection relays, and busbar trunking systems under its roof, a business that now contributes 8% of the company’s consolidated turnover and feeds directly into the Smart Infrastructure portfolio.
- From the power plant to the plug - the portfolio spans the entire electrical chain: medium-voltage switchgear and substation automation at the grid level, low-voltage protection and switching devices inside buildings, and fire safety, building automation, and energy-performance software that manages it all. One project covered 42 million square feet of high-rise commercial space with a single security and building management system.
- Sustainability as a sales tool - the business helps customers cut energy bills and carbon footprints directly, delivering annual energy savings of over 13% and emission savings of 370 tonnes of CO₂ equivalent for a leading hospitality chain, while its e-mobility chargers and microgrid solutions position it for the electrification of transport and distributed energy.
3. Digital Industries: the German automation brain
This business sells the software and control systems that run factories, but it manufactures very little in India - it is essentially a high-knowledge distribution and services engine for Siemens AG’s global automation portfolio.
- Know-how, not hardware - the core strength is process knowledge: understanding how a pharmaceutical plant, a biscuit factory, or a steel mill operates, and then layering on automation and digitalisation. Motors and other hardware can be outsourced because the value sits in the automation and digital twin software that designs, simulates, and runs the production line.
- Dependent on the German parent - the business has full access to Siemens AG’s global product portfolio at transfer pricing, full access to all technology, and full access to global experts, but it does minimal local manufacturing, so its costs swing with the Euro-rupee exchange rate and its exports remain in the low single digits.
- Digital twin before a single brick is laid - the COMOS plant-engineering software lets customers design the product, the manufacturing process, and the entire factory layout - including worker positioning and workbench heights - and simulate it all in a virtual walk-through before physical construction begins. Once running, the digital model links to the real factory in real time, so changes can be tested and optimised before hitting the shop floor.
- Selling outcomes, not boxes - customer buying behaviour has shifted from lowest-price tenders to demanding flexibility, speed, and end-to-end solutions that solve specific problems: reducing wastage in a biscuit plant, improving energy efficiency in a hotel, or increasing line speed in a pharmaceutical factory. The business responds with solutions like a spray-dryer optimiser that delivered a 1.5% throughput increase and 4% energy savings with a payback of less than 12 months.
Group structure and partners
Siemens Ltd is 75% owned by the German parent and its affiliates, operates with full access to Siemens AG’s global technology and supply chains, and has just completed a structural clean-up that removed its energy and low-voltage motors businesses from the portfolio.
- Promoter control - Siemens AG, Germany, is the ultimate holding company, with the promoter group holding exactly 75.00% of the equity through Siemens International Holding B.V. (52.77%), Siemens Aktiengesellschaft (18.00%), and two smaller entities.
- The energy spin-off - the Energy business, which covered gas turbines, steam turbines, power transformers, and high-voltage grid technologies, was demerged into a separately listed company, Siemens Energy India Limited, effective March 2025. Shareholders received one share of the new entity for every Siemens Ltd share they held, and it listed on the stock exchanges in June 2025.
- The motors exit - the Low Voltage Motors business, which operated an asset-light outsourced manufacturing model with roughly 97% of revenue from contract manufacturing, is being sold to Innomotics India Private Limited for ₹22 billion in cash, with completion expected by June 2026. The sale was forced by Siemens AG’s global divestment of Innomotics GmbH, which took all the intellectual property rights with it.
- Subsidiaries folding in - the wholly owned rail signalling subsidiary, Siemens Rail Automation Private Limited, is being merged back into Siemens Ltd, while the 99.22%-owned C&S Electric continues to operate as a low-voltage equipment subsidiary contributing 8% of consolidated turnover.