Sona Comstar is betting on a 10x decade. Can execution match the ambition?

That company is Sona BLW Precision Forgings.

Over the last 10 years, its revenue has grown from Rs 345 crore in FY15 to Rs 3,555 crore in FY25 and Rs 4,475 crore in FY26, while the order book has swelled to Rs 24,000 crore, 5.4 times annual revenue.

Unlike most Indian auto ancillaries, Sona Comstar has grown through acquisitions: A private equity-engineered merger, a sensor company bought in Serbia, a 63-year-old railway business bought from Escorts Kubota, a robotics alliance signed in a small German town, and now twin joint ventures with Denso.

Sona Comstar: 1-year stock price movement

Source: http://www.tradingView.com

The question investors need to answer: Is this a focused technology company using deals as a tool, or a serial dealmaker whose ambition is outrunning its earnings? Let’s dive in.

Born out of a private equity playbook

Sona BLW was founded in 1995 through a technology partnership with Japan’s Mitsubishi Materials. Its core expertise was warm precision forging of differential bevel gears, a mission-critical component found in every vehicle, whether powered by petrol, diesel, hybrid or electricity.

Source: Author illustrations

In 2017, Blackstone acquired Comstar Automotive, followed by a controlling stake in Sona BLW in 2018, before merging the two businesses in 2019. The combination brought together precision driveline components and electric drive systems, positioning the company for the transition toward electrification.

The 2021 IPO marked one of India’s most successful private equity exits, with Blackstone eventually realising around Rs 12,800 crore.

Understanding the business: From one product to five verticals

Management estimates that had Sona remained the old single-product gear forger, revenue would still have compounded at around 12% annually. Instead, products developed organically now contribute over 35% of revenue, while acquisitions and product innovations account for more than 40%. Put differently, nearly three-quarters of today’s Sona Comstar did not exist within the company a decade ago.

The result is a business built across five verticals.

The largest remains the driveline, comprising differential gears, assemblies and precision forged components. Having produced over 500 million differential gears, Sona now commands 8.8% of the global differential bevel gear market, nearly double its 2019 share, while dominating the Indian market across passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles and tractors.

More importantly, these are deeply engineered, mission-critical components that remain on a vehicle platform for five to seven years once qualified.

Source: Q1 FY27 presentation

Beyond driveline, the company has expanded into motors, sensors and software through Novelic, railway equipment through Escorts Kubota, and, most recently, Robotics and Physical AI. Together, these businesses manufacture mission-critical components across 12 plants in India, the US, Mexico, China and Serbia, supplying seven of the world’s ten largest passenger vehicle OEMs.

Electrification sits across all these verticals. Sona now supports 69 EV programmes across 36 customers, with Q1 FY27 BEV revenue surging 107% year-on-year to Rs 436 crore, representing a record 44% of automotive revenue.

Management also views hybrids as an opportunity rather than a threat, since they require both mechanical driveline and electric powertrain components, increasing Sona’s content per vehicle. That strategy was reflected in Q1 FY27, when the company secured a Rs 640 crore hybrid differential assembly order from an existing North American customer, one of the largest driveline wins in its history.

The Novelic acquisition: Buying a brain in Belgrade

In January 2023, Sona Comstar entered into the semiconductor design and sensing ecosystem by acquiring a 54% stake in Serbia-based Novelic for EUR 40.5 million, valuing the company at EUR 64.5 million. A specialist in mmWave radar, Novelic develops the complete radar stack, from chip architecture and antennas to signal processing and embedded software.

The structure of the deal reflected Sona’s capital allocation philosophy. While acquiring control, it allowed the three founders to retain a 46% stake and continue running the business, combining entrepreneurial continuity with Sona’s global OEM relationships and manufacturing scale.

Source: August 2024 corporate presentation

The strategic rationale was clear. As vehicle safety regulations increasingly mandate in-cabin sensing, Novelic’s radar technology enables applications such as child presence detection and seat occupancy sensing, capabilities cameras cannot reliably provide. The company has since expanded into short-range and park-assist radar, broadening Sona’s product portfolio across passenger and commercial vehicles.

Three years later, the acquisition is proving valuable beyond automotive. As later sections show, it was Novelic’s perception stack, rather than Sona’s traditional expertise in gears or motors, that secured two of the company’s first three robotics orders.

The railway foray: Buying six decades of trust at 1.8 times sales

If Novelic was a bet on the future, the acquisition of Escorts Kubota’s Railway Equipment Division (RED) was a bet on an entrenched incumbent with decades of customer relationships. Acquired for Rs 1,600 crore and completed in June 2025, RED has spent over 60 years supplying safety-critical components such as brake systems, couplers and suspension systems to Indian Railways, including the braking system for the Vande Bharat Express.

Railway Division products

Source: Q2 FY25 investor presentation

The real asset, however, was not the factory but the relationships. Indian Railways is one of the world’s most demanding customers, with qualification cycles that span years and vendor relationships that often last decades. By acquiring RED, Sona inherited a moat that would be nearly impossible to recreate organically.

The valuation made the deal even more attractive. RED generated Rs 913 crore of revenue and Rs 188 crore of pre-tax profit in FY25, implying an acquisition multiple of roughly 1.8x sales and 8.5x pre-tax earnings.

For a business exposed to long-term themes such as Vande Bharat expansion, Kavach rollout, metro rail and freight modernisation, Sona was effectively buying growth at a fraction of its own valuation.

Integration has progressed rapidly. The railway business contributed around Rs 800 crore in its first 10 months, expanded into products such as electric control panels and HVAC systems, and ended FY26 with an order book of roughly Rs 1,200 crore.

The trade-off is lower profitability, but management has consciously exchanged some margin for greater diversification, predictable demand and a customer whose spending is driven by long-term infrastructure investment rather than automotive cycles.

The Denso joint ventures: A masterclass in give and take

Sona Comstar’s JV journey over the past year highlights both the opportunities and risks of partnership-led growth.

The first lesson came from China. In July 2025, Sona announced a 60:40 joint venture with Jinnaite Machinery (JNT) to manufacture driveline systems, a move widely viewed as a gateway to supplying BYD. Just three months later, the company confirmed the JV had been suspended following the cancellation of the BYD programme. It was a reminder that, in an era of geopolitical tensions, even flawless execution cannot eliminate external risks.

The second chapter was far more significant. On 22 July 2026, Sona and Denso announced two complementary joint ventures. In the two- and three-wheeler JV, Sona transferred its low-voltage EV drivetrain business into a new subsidiary valued at Rs 1,750 crore, with Denso acquiring a 49% stake. Sona retained majority ownership, management control, and licensed its technology to the venture while receiving royalty income.

The four-wheeler JV followed the reverse structure. Denso holds 51% ownership and management control, contributing its high-voltage EV technology, while Sona gains access to advanced liquid-cooled motors, generators, and traction inverters without bearing years of R&D risk.

Source: Q1 FY27 presentation

Viewed together, the partnerships are elegantly designed. Each company controls the segment where it possesses the strongest technological advantage while licensing its IP to the venture.

Sona has monetised a mature business, retained control where it enjoys market leadership, and secured access to high-voltage technology that would have been difficult to build independently.

The trade-off, however, is equally clear: in the future high-voltage EV market, Sona is the minority partner, exchanging control for technology access.

Robotics and physical AI: The lottery ticket just paid its first dividend

When Sona Comstar signed an MoU with NEURA Robotics in October 2025, it was easy to dismiss it as another aspirational announcement.

Although NEURA is one of Europe’s leading cognitive robotics companies, an MoU alone does not mean actual business, and even the Rs 62.6 crore robotics capex approved in June 2026 appeared modest.

The Q1 FY27 results changed that perception.

Sona formally launched Robotics and Physical AI as its fifth growth vertical with Rs 600 crore of confirmed orders spanning an advanced robotics subsystem, a radar perception stack for autonomous mobile robots (AMRs), and short-range radar sensors for an Indian commercial vehicle OEM. The total order book has already reached Rs 800 crore, with two of the three initial orders powered by Novelic’s radar and perception technology, highlighting the strategic value of the Serbian acquisition.

Source: Q1 FY27 presentation

But the company’s ambition extends beyond supplying components.

Sona intends to participate across the robotics value chain, from precision gearboxes, motors, sensors and actuators to perception systems, engineering services and complete robotic platforms. It showcased its first in-house AMR prototype at CES 2026, while eVTOL gearboxes and propulsion systems have also entered its product roadmap.

The strategic logic is compelling. Every robot relies on precision motors, gears, controllers and sensors, capabilities that already form the core of Sona Comstar’s engineering expertise.

Rather than entering an unfamiliar industry, the company is redeploying existing capabilities into what could become one of the defining industrial supply chains of the 2030s, backed by Rs 600 crore of orders that suggest the opportunity is already moving beyond concept into commercial reality.

The rare earth crisis

FY26 did not begin well. China’s April 2025 export restrictions on rare earth magnets, the small, powerful neodymium magnets inside almost every EV traction motor, hit the global industry, and Sona harder than most, given its motor ambitions. Q1 FY26 revenue fell 5% year-on-year, and PAT dropped about 12% to roughly Rs 124 crore, the company’s worst quarter as a listed entity.

The response is the most underappreciated part of the Sona story.

Within months, the company developed, tested and validated rare-earth-free motors for EV applications, machines that deliver comparable performance without heavy rare-earth magnets, and promptly won new motor program nominations in Asia and Europe on the back of them.

It also kept globalising its footprint, committing $6 million to its Mexico operations and winning a Rs 260 crore driveline order for the Mexico plant. A supply chain crisis that crushed the quarter became, within a year, a product differentiator competitors do not have.

The financials: The reacceleration has arrived

FY26 was a record year, but the quality of growth was mixed.

Summarised Consolidated Financials

Although the railway acquisition contributed significantly to FY26 growth, the first quarter of FY27 demonstrated that the company has entered the new financial year with encouraging momentum, delivering strong growth in revenue, EBITDA, PAT, and BEV (Battery Electric Vehicle) revenues.

Q1FY26 financial highlights

Source: Q1 FY27 presentation

Q1 FY27 provided the strongest answer yet. Revenue grew 54% year-on-year to Rs 1,310 crore, EBITDA rose 49% to Rs 303 crore, and PAT increased 45% to Rs 181 crore. More importantly, BEV revenue more than doubled to Rs 436 crore, growing 107% year-on-year, indicating that the recovery was driven by the core business rather than acquisitions alone.

The order pipeline remained equally strong.

During the quarter, Sona secured Rs 1,800 crore of new business, including a Rs 640 crore hybrid driveline order from North America, Rs 90 crore of hub-wheel motor programmes, and Rs 250 crore of conventional differential gear orders. After accounting for execution during the quarter, the total order book stood at Rs 24,000 crore, equivalent to 5.4 times FY26 revenue.

Segment-wise order book