Context The founder of Titagarh Rail Systems, Jagadish Prasad Chowdhary, commenced his professional journey as an account assistant at a tea estate in
Darjeeling, West Bengal. Subsequently, he relocated to Calcutta (now Kolkata) and assumed the role of an accountant at a steel casting company that supplied materials to the Indian Railways. Chowdhary eventually assumed the position of
Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the steel castings company. In the year 1982, Chowdhary as an entrepreneur acquired the defunct foundry division of the government-owned Britannia Engineering then under liquidation, situated in Titagarh, Barrackpore, West Bengal. Renaming the enterprise as Titagarh Steels Limited (TSL), he commenced production of railway casting components, specifically bogies and couplers & crossings and turned around the operations of the Foundry in a record time. In 1994, Chowdhary was invited to present a rehabilitation plan for the two Paper Mills of the then sick Titagarh Paper Mills Company Limited which were vested in TSL by a Scheme of Rehabilitation by the
Board for Industrial and Financial Reconstruction (BIFR). Subsequently, these Paper Mills were spun off into two separate companies through a Scheme of Arrangement sanctioned by the Hon’ble
High Court, Calcutta.
Development Chowdhary founded Titagarh Rail Systems Limited on 3 July 1997 to manufacture railway wagons. The company started out with an annual production capacity of 180 wagons. Titagarh Rail Systems turned around AFR and with the subsidiary's revenue rising from in 2010–11 to in 2011–12, and the employee headcount almost doubling from 85 to 150. A French commercial court ordered the
liquidation of AFR in July 2019. The next month, Titagarh announced that it would exit from AFR. Vice-chairman and managing director, Umesh Chowdhary, stated that AFR had been making losses of €4–5 million a year for the past three years due to general economic factors, and would have required more capital to reach profitability. Titagarh Rail Systems had invested in AFR since acquiring the company. Titagarh Rail Systems acquired Corporated Shipyard in 2012 and merged it in Titagarh Marines to manufacture ships for the
Indian Navy. Corporated Shipyard won its first defence contract in 2017. In 2015, Titagarh Rail Systems acquired the brand name and
know-how of French cast steel bogie manufacturer Sambre et Meuse. On 16 July 2015, Titagarh acquired a 90% stake in Italian rail equipment firm
Firema Trasporti for an estimated million. The remaining 10% stake was held by Italian company Adler Plastics SpA. In June 2017, Titagarh announced that it had acquired the 10% stake from Adler Plastics for an undisclosed amount. The company was subsequently renamed as Titagarh Firema SpA. Titagarh Firema designs metro rail coaches and manufactures them at its factories at
Caserta,
Spello and
Tito. In May 2016, Titagarh Rail Systems formed a 50/50 joint venture with French Matiere SAS to manufacture metallic and modular bridges. Titagarh Rail Systems acquired Matiere's stake in July 2020, making it a wholly owned subsidiary. In 2019, Titagarh Rail Systems was awarded the contract to supply 102 aluminium bodied metro rail coaches for the
Pune Metro by
Maha Metro. While 3 of the total 34 rakes would be manufactured at the Firema plant in
Italy, the remaining 31 trainsets would be manufactured at TRSL's facility in
Uttarpara, Kolkata. In April 2023, the company secured a contract to supply rolling stock for the
Ahmedabad Metro. In February 2024, the company secured a contract for supplying 250 specialized wagons to the
Ministry of Defence. the company was looking for to construct a greenfield shipyard to construct larger ships, both naval and commercial. == Financials ==