Key takeaways
- Founded in 1958 in Mumbai, starting with transformer oils for state electricity boards.
- It added aluminium conductors (1995) and specialty polymer cables (2005), running three businesses in parallel.
- From 2023 the largest-ever Indian transmission capex cycle lifted its conductor business.
- By FY25 revenue topped ₹16,000 crore, and the stock compounded over 5x in eighteen months.
- 1958 D.M. Desai founds Apar in Mumbai, its initial business transformer oils for the state electricity boards.
- 1985 It becomes India’s largest transformer-oil manufacturer.
- 1995 It adds aluminium conductors for overhead transmission lines.
- 2005 It expands into specialty polymer cables for solar, automotive and industrial use.
- 2018 Three businesses run in parallel, but the stock trades cheap for an extended period.
- 2021 Specialty cables become a growth engine on solar and EV-charging tailwinds.
- 2023 Power Grid Corporation begins the largest-ever Indian transmission capex cycle, and Apar’s conductor business benefits.
- 2024 The stock compounds over 5x in eighteen months, with margins at decade highs.
- FY25 Revenue tops ₹16,000 crore at an operating margin around 8%.
- 2025 It adds defence-cable orders and begins exporting to US data-centre customers, with grid capex and exports flagged as parallel drivers.
- 2026 Apar is one of three or four listed Indian companies with direct leverage to the grid super-cycle.
Apar was a transformer-oil company for thirty years and a conductor company for another twenty, and the market gave its diversification a discount for most of that time. It became a grid pure-play only when the transmission, renewable and EV cycles all ordered at the same time. Diversification looks like a discount until every line runs. Here is the journey, year by year.
The pattern is the point
Apar was a transformer-oil company for thirty years and a conductor company for another twenty, becoming a grid pure-play only when transmission, renewable and EV cycles all ordered at once. Diversification looks like a discount right up until every diversification line runs together, and then it re-rates fast.
