Every vehicle on an Indian road — a scooter, a family car, a truck, a tractor — rolls on parts most of us will never see. Deep inside engines, gearboxes, steering systems and axles sit tiny, precisely engineered bearings, each one carrying load and cutting friction, millions of times over, without a second thought. A remarkable share of those bearings are made in Mumbai by a company that pioneered the craft in India: NRB Bearings Limited.
Founded in Mumbai in 1965, NRB was the first company to manufacture needle roller bearings in India, the company says — and that first step grew into a story of quiet national scale. Today, the company says, its bearings are in over 90% of Indian vehicles, a presence built over six decades of steady, engineering-led growth.
The pioneer that put India on rollers
When NRB began, needle roller bearings — slim, high-load rollers that pack enormous strength into a small space — were not made in India at all. NRB changed that, and from that first product it built one of the widest bearing ranges produced in the country. The company says its portfolio now spans needle roller bearings, cylindrical roller bearings, tapered roller bearings, drawn cup bearings, special ball bearings and thrust bearings, alongside planetary shafts and pins, crank pins and related precision components — more than 3,000 products shaped for the specialised needs of mobility.
That range is why NRB shows up in so many places at once. The company says its bearings serve gearboxes, steering systems, axles and air-conditioning compressors, and reach across two-wheelers, passenger vehicles, commercial vehicles, farm equipment, off-highway machines and marine applications, as well as industrial machinery. Wherever something needs to move smoothly under load, there is a good chance an NRB bearing is doing the work.
Plants across India, customers across the world
NRB’s manufacturing footprint mirrors the Indian auto industry itself. The company has plants at Aurangabad, Waluj and Jalna in Maharashtra, along with Hyderabad and Pantnagar, plus a plant in Thailand — and its design and engineering centre at Turbhe in Navi Mumbai tests and validates new bearing designs before they reach customers. A lean facility at Ranchi, through subsidiary SNL Bearings, adds a base for low-volume products.
From that base, the company says, it supplies bearings and allied products to customers in 26 countries across five continents, including Germany, France, Italy, Japan, Brazil, China, Mexico, Sweden and the United States — with subsidiaries in Thailand, Europe and the USA supporting its global reach. A recent joint venture with Italy’s Unitec adds another step in that global journey, bringing together Indian manufacturing scale with European engineering.
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Precision as a discipline
Bearings are a business where microns matter, and NRB’s plants are built around that discipline. The company says its facilities hold ISO 9001, IATF 16949, ISO 14001 and ISO 45001 certifications, along with REACH and ELV compliance — the quality, automotive, environmental and safety standards that global vehicle makers demand of every supplier on their lines.
That discipline also shows in how the work is done. Automated handling, in-process measurement and rigorous testing run through NRB’s shops, so that a bearing that looks simple carries the consistency a vehicle maker can trust across millions of units.
The numbers behind six decades
The company says its revenue from operations reached Rs 1,198.61 crore in the financial year 2024-25 — the scale of a Mumbai pioneer that began with a single product India had never made, and grew into one of the country’s leading friction-solutions makers. Its vision, as the company states it, is to be the recognised leader in the design and production of customised friction solutions, with a presence in every vehicle in the world.
From a 1965 Mumbai start to bearings in nine out of ten Indian vehicles and customers on five continents, NRB Bearings shows what Indian manufacturing does at its best: master a small, hard, essential part of the machine — and keep making it better, year after year, for the whole world to roll on.
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