Escorts' Railway Equipment Division recorded a rise in income for the second successive year with revenues increasing by 11.98 percent to Rs205.4 crore from Rs183.5 crore in the previous fiscal. Where is this growth coming from?
We presently operate in the Railway Component Space for brake systems, couplers and suspension systems besides composite brake blocks & brake pads, for all the different rolling stock segments. The growth is coming from a healthy mix of both conventional products like air brake and electro pneumatic brakes, couplers and the traditional shock absorbers and also new products like axle mounted disc brakes, high end suspension systems and rubber to metal bonded products. A very focussed strategic approach on continual operational excellence, relentless value engineering has helped us to not only grow very profitably even in our conventional products but also through frugal innovations and targeted localisations even in our new products like high end dampers, axle mounted disc brakes, etc. The growth from new products hasbeen around 2.5 to 3X from last two years and we are confident that we will further multiply in this segment.

Escorts' ambition is to bring a five-fold rise in the Railway Business' annual revenues to Rs1,000 crore by 2020. What will drive this growth and what is your roadmap to achieve the same?
We have a clear roadmap of our growth for our 2020 plans where the multifold rise is again due to a strategic blend of conventional products, new high end products for Indian Railways and also parallelly for the upcoming Metro segment.

We have invested in selective capex and have also built a very strong R&D team who have significant domain knowledge and also international design experience with some of the best Railway OEMs of the world. The growth would be fuelled by a) In-house product development for the home markets and the Export market of Africa and SE Asia where we already have sufficient know how, b) Foreign collaboration for the new products and new markets where we do not presently meet the eligibility criteria of Government procurement and c) M&A for the select niche products where we would like to diversify to offer complete packaged solution to new customer like Metro Segment and also the upcoming High speed segment.

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