Ride The Gravy Train

Titagarh Wagons is best placed to make the most of the rail capex binge and its new businesses will be an icing on the cake

- Ambareesh Baliga

Action, emotion, drama and romance for ages have been the raison d’être of Indian cinema. But there is one more facet to India’s rich filmi tradition – and that’s trains. Bollywood, in particular, has the longest playing track with Indian Railways, be it songs or even movies such as The Train, The Burning Train and 27 Down. But the most engaging encounter with railways has been one that involves action, and how can one not talk about the cult movie Sholay. A drudgingly moving goods train ends up creating a strong bond between the upright inspector and a pair of crooks Jai and Veeru. Just like Sholay made the ubiquitous goods train more appealing to moviegoers, so has Jagdish Prasad Chowdhary for investors with Titagarh Wagons. A heavy engineering industry veteran, Chowdhary set up Titagarh two decades back in Kolkata and the company has since emerged as one of the leading private sector wagon manufacturers in the country.

While wagons remain its flagship business, Titagarh has also forayed into ship-building and allied businesses to make the most of the growth opportunity. With India embarking on an unprecedented infrastructure spending spree, an investor would naturally look out for a potential multi-bagger and Titagarh is clearly on track to becoming one.

With five facilities across the country, Titagarh today can produce 8,400 wagons, 36 rakes of electric multiple units and diesel electric multiple units, 500 coaches and 30,000 MT of castings. Its defence division builds bailey bridges, nuclear shelters and defence-related railway wagons. It also has a division that manufactures crawler cranes, excavators, besides a ship division which builds naval barges and bulk carriers. Not to mention its recent entrant into the tractors and farm equipment business.