- Simplex Infrastructures is one of India’s oldest civil engineering contractors - a century-old builder that has put up everything from the country’s tallest residential towers to its largest thermal power plants, completing over 2,600 projects since 1924. After a period of severe financial stress that saw its loans classified as non-performing, the company underwent a landmark debt restructuring in 2025, with a government-backed asset reconstruction company (NARCL) getting 15% new equity shares from the conversion of unsustainable debt and resetting the company’s borrowings to a sustainable ₹1,250 Crores. The recurring approach that explains the business is a disciplined bidding philosophy: the company prices for the client’s specific demands, negotiates to remove risks from contracts, and walks away when the risks outweigh the potential reward - a mindset that has kept it alive across a century of cycles.
Business segments
Four construction engines spanning the infrastructure spectrum - a power-plant specialist that has touched over 80% of India’s thermal capacity, a building-and-housing workhorse, a roads-and-bridges builder, and an urban-infrastructure arm that lays the pipes and sewers beneath cities - plus a collection of niche capabilities in industrial structures, marine works, railways, and oil drilling that round out the portfolio.
1. Power - Transmission: the engine behind India’s power plants
The company has built civil foundations and structural works for more than 100 power projects and over 80% of the country’s thermal power plants, making it a near-ubiquitous contractor in India’s electricity backbone.
- Civil works for every kind of power plant - it executes the groundwork, structural construction, and precision fabrication for thermal, hydel, and nuclear plants, as well as Ultra Mega Power Projects, and has been doing so since building its first thermal plant in 1960.
- Design capability in-house - the company has developed its own design and drawing capability for slip-form work on a 275-metre-high RCC (reinforced cement concrete) chimney with a 42-metre bottom diameter, a specialised skill that reduces reliance on outside designers.
2. Building & Housing: the high-rise and mass-housing specialist
A legacy division active since 1955, it has delivered turnkey residential towers, hospitals, hotels, and institutional campuses - including the world’s second-tallest residential building in Mumbai - and accounted for nearly a quarter of the order book in FY25.
- Pioneer of tall concrete frames - the company constructed the first 18-storey RCC (reinforced cement concrete) frame building in South East Asia, the National Tower in Kolkata, and was an early adopter of modular tunnel-shuttering systems that speed up mass-housing construction.
- From luxury hotels to public hospitals - its project roster spans the Ritz-Carlton in Bengaluru, the New Doha Hotel - Hilton in Qatar, and the AIIMS hospital building in New Delhi, showing the division’s ability to switch between private developers and government clients.
- Deep foundations under every structure - the division’s capabilities include piling and deep-foundation work, which it deploys for both its own building projects and as a standalone service for other structures, such as piling for staff quarters and a medical college hostel in Chennai.
- 24% of the order book - the segment’s share of the order book stood at 24% in FY25, making it the largest single vertical by future work, with recent completions including the Raniganj Rehabilitation Housing Project in Asansol.
3. Roads & Bridges: the highway-and-flyover builder
It builds expressways, national highways, flyovers, and bridges for government bodies like the NHAI, using proprietary girder-launching techniques and imported hot-mix plants to control both cost and speed.
- Cheaper girder launching, in-house - the division has developed its own design and fabrication capability for lattice girders and overhead gantries that launch 28-metre and 32-metre I-girders, a method that costs less than hiring high-capacity cranes.
- Imported plant for better margins - in 2021, the company imported a Marini BB 1500 Hot Mix Plant with a capacity of 120 tonnes per hour, chosen specifically for its low fuel consumption and higher productivity, which directly lowers the cost of laying asphalt.
- Pavement marking at speed - it uses spray-painting with line-laser technology to achieve 3 to 4 kilometres of pavement marking per day, a pace that helps meet tight government deadlines.
- 20% of the order book - roads and bridges also represented 20% of the order book in FY25, with new wins including two flyovers on NH-34 in West Bengal and a bypass on NH-27.
4. Urban Infrastructures: the water-and-sewerage network layer
This division builds the hidden arteries of cities - long-distance raw-water intake systems, sewerage networks, and effluent treatment plants - and has been doing so since 1965.
- End-to-end water systems - its scope covers design, engineering, manufacture, supply, installation, and commissioning of raw-water intake and delivery systems, including the piping, pumping, and electrical transmission that moves water over long distances.
- Sewerage and treatment - it constructs sewerage networks and effluent treatment plants, with a recent completion being the Goa Sewerage Project in Panaji.
- 13% of the order book - the segment’s share of the order book was 13% in FY25, and it has historically contributed a disproportionately large share of revenue - over 25% in FY22 and FY23 - because urban-infrastructure projects tend to bill steadily once underway.
5. Niche engines: industrial, marine, railways, and oil drilling
A set of smaller, specialised capabilities - industrial structures for steel and cement plants, marine works for ports and jetties, metro and railway construction, and charter-hire oil drilling - that the company dials up when the right project arrives.
- Industrial Structures - active since 1935, it has built blast furnaces, chimneys, and factory civil works for steelmakers like SAIL, Tata, and Jindal, and in FY25 it jumped to 22% of the order book, signalling a large industrial contract win.
- Marine - the company has been associated with every major Indian port - Goa, Haldia, Vizag, Kochi, Mundra, Mumbai, Paradip, Adani, and Dahej - and is among the few Indian contractors with expertise in underwater steel piling in adverse sea conditions.
- Railways - it pioneered automatic track-laying for high-speed trains and has built metro viaducts and stations in Mumbai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Bangalore, as well as in Dubai, though its order-book share has been negligible in recent years.
- Oil Drilling Services - the company provides charter-hire drilling rigs on a time-rate basis for clients like OIL India, and in 2024 it imported and absorbed an electric top-drive drilling rig of 2,000 horsepower.
Group structure and partners
The company operates through a web of Indian and overseas subsidiaries, joint ventures, and branch offices across the Middle East, Africa, and South Asia, but its defining structural feature is now the presence of NARCL as a 15% shareholder and board participant following the 2025 debt restructuring.
- Overseas branches in eight countries - the company maintains branch offices in Qatar, Oman, Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sri Lanka, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia, and Bangladesh, giving it an on-the-ground presence for international project bidding.
- Subsidiaries and joint ventures - the group includes wholly-owned subsidiaries such as Simplex (Middle East) Limited and Simplex (Bangladesh) Private Limited, as well as joint operations run through consortia like “Simplex-Gayatri Consortium” that pool resources for specific contracts.
- NARCL as a restructuring shareholder - under the Master Restructuring Agreement signed in January 2025, NARCL will get 15% new equity shares of the company on a fully diluted basis from the conversion of unsustainable debt and pledge of 11% shares from the Promoter Group, and appointed a nominee director to the board.
- Ongoing settlements with remaining lenders - while NARCL represented 85.44% of secured lenders by value, the company has been negotiating one-time settlements with the remaining lenders, including a settlement with ICICI Bank that involved the allotment of equity shares in July 2025.