Jupiter Wagons boasts of a market capitalisation of Rs24,000 crore backed by its annual revenue of Rs 3,641 crore as of March 2024, and Rs332.8 crore in profit. It makes everything from tripper lorries to railway wagons and electric vehicles
Vivek Lohia, Managing director, Jupiter Wagons Limited. Image: Mexy Xavier
For most of his life, Vivek Lohia’s father had worked in executive roles at the now-defunct Kolkata-based Hindustan Development Corporation (HDC), a maker of railway products, before Vivek, his Wharton Business School-educated son, nudged him to set up their own entrepreneurial venture. Growing up in Kolkata, junior Lohia’s conversations with his father often revolved around wagons and trains.
“They (HDC) were one of the pioneers in the railway sector. He [Vivek’s father] had helped set up that company,” says Lohia. “The whole idea was that since we have so much of knowledge about the sector and relationships—not only with the companies on the private side but also with the government—we felt it was a good opportunity… that is how we made our foray into the sector.”
Lohia had come back from the US after working there for a few years, and along with his father, set up Jupiter Wagons Limited in 2006 to help build wagons, mostly for the Indian Railways. “Back then, there were only two or three companies dominating the sector,” Lohia says. “Since we had so much in-depth knowledge of the sector, we knew that there was a lot of complacency in the way they did business.”
Jupiter Wagons started by setting up a foundry in Kolkata where it made castings, couplers and draft gears for railway wagons before going on to build freight cars and wagons. The company’s first customer was the Indian Railways, and it made boxing wagons to carry coal and iron ore for the 171-year-old public sector organisation.
Since then, the Kolkata-headquartered company has grown into one of India’s largest railway engineering behemoths with a market capitalisation of Rs24,000 crore. The company’s annual revenues stand at Rs3,641 crore as of March 2024, with profits of Rs332.8 crore. That number is likely to swell to Rs10,000 crore in the next three years, with a bottom line of Rs1,000 crore, if plans set by the Lohias fructify.
(This story appears in the 20 September, 2024 issue of Forbes India. To visit our Archives, click here.)