Titagarh Wagons, the flagship company of the Titagarh group and promoted by the Chowdhary family, is eyeing manufacture of cost-effective diagnostic solutions for signalling and safety systems for Indian Railways.

Umesh Chowdhary, Vice-Chairman and MD, Titagarh Wagons Ltd, told BusinessLine on the sidelines of a CII seminar here that development of the new offerings is likely to materialise over the next one year. “We are likely to win something on the track diagnostics,” he said.

Titagarh Wagons has recently entered into a memorandum of understanding with MERMEC of Italy for setting up a 50:50 joint venture company for development and manufacture of these offerings. MERMEC and Titagarh will jointly invest in R&D and manufacturing.

According to Chowdhary, the company intends to leverage India as its manufacturing hub. Exports also are expected to grow this fiscal.

TWL reported an over 78 per cent increase in its consolidated revenues for FY17 to ₹1,739 crore; the Italian subsidiary’s – Titagarh Firema – top-line was ₹1,011 crore.

“Our Indian units are becoming manufacturing hubs for even foreign subsidiaries,” he said.

The first stage of the plan was to establish the foreign subsidiaries, as they were mostly stressed assets when Titagarh acquired them. In the next stage, focus was on low-cost manufacturing from Indian units while value addition continues from the foreign ones.

“We don’t intend to close down the foreign subsidiaries. Now we are also exporting wagons for the French company (Titagarh Wagons AFR). They are manufactured in India and finished in France,” Chowdhary added.

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