Wendt India is fundamentally an engineer’s engineer - a company that makes the ultra-precise grinding wheels, machines, and components that other manufacturers need to shape the hardest materials on earth, from jet-engine alloys to hip implants. Born in 1980 as an Indo-German joint venture and now part of the century-old Murugappa Group, it has spent four decades turning a single technology partnership into a one-stop shop for complete grinding solutions, recently securing outright ownership of the ‘Wendt’ brand across more than 40 countries. The recurring approach is to master a difficult material-removal process in-house - sintering diamonds under heat and pressure, building the CNC machine that spins the wheel, or grinding a fuel-pump part to micron tolerances - and then sell that capability as a product, a service, or a precision component, capturing value at every step. # Business segments Five engines at different stages - a super-abrasives cash cow that dominates the portfolio, a machine-building workshop that feeds it, a precision-components platform scaling into aerospace and medical, a Thai distribution arm, and a fledgling European subsidiary still under construction - each built on the grinding expertise of the one before. ## 1. Super Abrasives: the core grinding-wheel business that everything else rests on **Diamond and cubic boron nitride wheels that grind materials too hard for ordinary abrasives, sold into cyclical industrial markets where precision is non-negotiable and price matters less.** - **The hardest tools for the hardest jobs** - the business makes grinding wheels from diamond and cubic boron nitride (CBN), the only materials capable of cutting tungsten carbide, ceramics, and cobalt-based super alloys used in aircraft engines and medical implants. These are not commodity abrasives; they are highly customised products where the majority of orders are built to a specific customer’s requirement. - **Cyclical demand tied to industrial production** - because super-abrasive wheels are used to manufacture long-lasting, expensive items like auto and aircraft parts, demand rises and falls with the broader industrial cycle, making the revenue stream inherently lumpy. The end-market mix is led by auto and auto ancillaries at roughly 30%, followed by steel, cutting tools, engineering, and bearings. - **High barriers keep competitors small** - the combination of complex technology, high initial investment, and deep application know-how in processes like sintering, vitrification, vacuum brazing, and electro-plating creates significant entry barriers, particularly for small and medium-sized enterprises. The company has reinforced this moat by indigenising bonding systems and developing wheels for semiconductor wafer grinding and solar-ingot grinding. - **A budget brand to capture the price-sensitive market** - recognising that not every customer needs a fully customised solution, the company launched fast-moving standard products under the ‘STAR’ brand to compete in the price-competitive segment without diluting the main Wendt brand. ## 2. Machines and Accessories: the CNC grinders that put the wheels to work **Special-purpose grinding machines built in-house for over three decades, turning the company’s application knowledge into capital equipment it sells to steel mills, cutting-tool makers, and automotive plants.** - **Machines designed around the grinding process** - the business manufactures CNC grinding machines with built-in gauging and probing, purpose-built for grinding hard-to-process metals with high accuracy. It is not a general machine-tool builder; the machines exist to solve specific grinding problems, such as the Precision Creep Feed Grinder or the Rotary Surface Grinding Machine. - **A shift from industry-specific to application-based selling** - rather than building a ‘steel-industry machine’ or an ‘automotive machine,’ the company is moving toward machines defined by the application they perform, which broadens the addressable market across sectors. In FY26, it manufactured 43 machines and added a compact surface grinder for sheer knives, opening a door into the non-steel segment. - **Technology acquired, not just licensed** - the business has historically relied on technology tie-ups, including with Delapena UK for honing machines and BARC for a specialised magneto-rheological finishing process, but it has now acquired the technology to manufacture peripheral grinding machines outright from Wendt GmbH (now PG&F Super Abrasives GmbH). This turns a royalty relationship into an owned capability. - **Efficiency squeezed from every machine built** - cost-reduction initiatives include introducing combi-drive systems, localising imported components, optimising designs, and reducing assembly time, all aimed at making each machine more profitable without raising prices. ## 3. Precision Products: the components business that turns grinding into a service **High-precision ground parts in steel, carbide, and ceramic, manufactured for nearly two decades and now pushing into aerospace, medical, and ceramic 3D printing.** - **Grinding as a service, not a product** - instead of selling a wheel or a machine, this business sells the finished precision-ground component itself: carbide plates, rotors, rings, vanes, and fuel-pump parts ground to micron-level tolerances. It is the same core competence applied at a different point in the value chain. - **Aerospace and auto provide the demand floor** - half of end-market demand comes from auto and auto ancillaries, with aerospace contributing another 20%, and the business saw a 7% sales increase in FY26 driven mainly by higher demand for fuel-pump parts. - **Ceramic 3D printing as a de-risking bet** - in a move to diversify beyond traditional grinding, the company signed a partnership with Lithoz GmbH, the global leader in ceramic 3D printing, to establish the technology within its own machinery and components range. This positions it to capture growth in the Indian additive-manufacturing market using a material - ceramic - it already understands deeply. - **Shop-floor discipline to protect margins** - the division initiated TPM-Jishu Hozen (a lean-manufacturing pillar focused on operator-led equipment care) to reduce machine breakdowns, directly targeting the uptime that determines how many precision parts it can ship. # Group structure and partners **A former joint venture that has untethered itself from its German parent, secured worldwide brand ownership, and now operates through a Thai subsidiary, a newly formed European subsidiary, and the backing of the Murugappa Group.** - **The joint venture that outgrew its parent** - for over four decades, Wendt India operated as a 37.5%-37.5% joint venture between Wendt GmbH and Carborundum Universal Ltd (CUMI), until May 2025 when Wendt GmbH sold its entire stake through an Offer for Sale, leaving CUMI as the sole promoter with 37.5% and the public holding the rest. The company ceased to be a joint venture but kept the name, having already acquired absolute ownership of the ‘Wendt’ brand and over 60 trademark registrations worldwide in March 2025. - **CUMI as a strategic anchor** - as part of the Murugappa Group, a conglomerate founded in 1900, the company benefits from CUMI’s extensive R&D infrastructure and application-development support in specialised areas, giving it a resource base that independent abrasives companies lack. - **Wendt Grinding Technologies, Thailand - the Asian distribution arm** - this wholly owned subsidiary, operating since 2005, sells coated, bonded, and super-abrasive products and recorded sales of Thai Baht 947 lakhs in FY26, with a deliberate shift toward a higher-margin product mix. A capital infusion in June 2026 increased its paid-up capital from THB 25,750,000 to THB 72,100,000 to fund expansion. - **Wendt GmbH, Germany - the European bridgehead** - incorporated in July 2025 with an initial capital of EUR 0.55 million and subsequently topped up to EUR 1.65 million, this subsidiary is tasked with distributing super-abrasive wheels and peripheral grinding machines across European markets. It is in an investment phase, recording a loss of EUR 0.98 million in its first year as it builds market presence.