Shanthi Gears Ltd (SGL), the Coimbatore based gear manufacturing company was promoted by P Subramanian, an entrepreneurial engineer in 1969 as a partnership concern. In July 1972, the partnership firm was converted into a Private Limited Company and later in March 1986 it became a Public Limited Company.
The Company is in the business of design, manufacture, supply and servicing of gears and gear boxes. The bulk of this market is serviced by five major national players while a fair portion of the market is met through imports. Import of gearboxes happens predominantly in the safety critical applications and high technology areas such as gearboxes for wind turbine generators, power plants and marine applications. While most of these are imported from Europe, China caters to the demand in other segments.
Shanthi Gears, which was just the maker of gears for textile machinery when it was started is now producing gears for industries as wide as process, power steel, cement, sugar and aviation. The product range extends from gears for simple applications such as hand-driven jacks to high-tech gears for supersonic jet aircraft.
The company opened its first factory in 1972 and a decade later it expanded the product range by start manufacturing worm gearboxes. In the mid-80's, SGL took the next step and began manufacturing helical and bevel helical gears. The company has also start producing geared motors simultaneously in this period.
In 1986, it has completed the project of putting up its own foundry. The foundry caters to the needs of grey iron and spheroid graphite castings, as well as non-ferrous ones such as phosphor bronze, aluminium etc. As a part of backward integration, a forging plant was also commissioned simultaneously. The company is getting 50% of its business from executing special orders i.e custom made gears.
In Mar.'92, SGL came out with a rights issue to part-finance the expansion-cum-modernisation of its plants. Apart from this, the company made a preferential issue of 3.4 lac equity shares (premium : Rs 160) to banks and mutual funds in Sep.'94.
Shanthi gears has a wholly-owned subsidiary 'Shanthi Sales', which looks after its entire marketing. During the 2004-05, Shanthi Sales Ltd ceased to be the subsidiary company consequent to the divestment of entire shares held by the company. The group companies of Shanthi gears are Shanthi Clothsline, a woven and Knitted garment manufacturing company; Shanthi Constructions, a infrastructure construction company; Shanthi Precision Industries Ltd (SPL), (Formerly Loyal Engineering - takeover by Shanthi group in 1998) and SPL was merged with the company with effect from 1st July 2003 in the exchange ratio of 1:5.
In August 2004 the company sub-divided its equity share face value from Rs.10/- to Re.1/-. Further the company has issued bonus equity shares for its shareholders in the ratio of 1:1.
In 2006, The company have state-of-the-art production machines/quality Control Facilities worth Rs.44.19 Crores have been added during the FY 2005-2006 along with our existing battery of Machines. Further, orders for Machineries worth Rs.37.47 Crores are yet to be executed by the respective suppliers.
During the year 2012-13, Tube Investments of India Ltd (TII) acquired his entire stake and followed it up with an Open Offer in line with the regulations and acquired another 26% from the general public. Effective from 19 November, 2012 Shanthi Gears Ltd (SGL) became a subsidiary of TII.
In 2016-17, the Company launched a program titled Connect 2016. In 2022-23, it expanded to encompass institutional sales and
business services, diversifying their portfolio and strengthening market presence. It built credentials to manufacture and test gearboxes at speeds exceeding 1 Lakh RPM which created a significant milestone in the gearbox industry.