The middle of the month is an anxious time at Eureka Forbes. 

It’s when leaders of the home-appliances company meet, either virtually or at their Mumbai headquarters, with executives of its parent—American private-equity firm Advent International—to review performance.

Afterwards, the leaders hand down action points to managers. “The problem is that action items keep changing every month, sometimes every week,” a manager said. 

The water-purifier division, say, will be asked to focus on IoT products in one quarter. “But in the middle of that,” a second manager said, “comes the additional responsibility of figuring out how to give a ‘better four-year conditional warranty’ for a product on Amazon.”

The incessant rearranging of goals is as much a symptom of the company’s predicament as its cause. Its profits are growing, but market capitalisation isn’t keeping sufficient pace for Advent to exit.

The company listed on the BSE in March 2022 at Rs 495, after it was demerged from Forbes & Company, and then on the NSE in September 2024. It now trades on the BSE at around Rs 450.

Eureka Forbes pioneered water purifiers in India. It was selling the appliances door-to-door long before rising incomes in the 1990s and 2000s made them a household must-have. By the end of the 2020s, though, the company had fallen on hard times. 

That’s when Advent, with assets under management of over $100 billion, boughtMintAdvent acquires Eureka Forbes for ₹4,400 crore it from the Shapoorji Pallonji Group for Rs 4,400 crore.

Advent gave Eureka Forbes a quick boost. The company’s profit surged to Rs 160 crore in FY26 from about Rs 30 crore in FY23, while revenue inched up to Rs 2,700 crore from Rs 2,100 crore. The operating profit margin grew to 13% from 4.5% and the company became debt-free. In Q1 FY27, revenue rose by 15% compared to the same quarter in FY26. 

Since its acquisition by Advent, the company has fixed leakages, made higher margins on sales, and reduced headcount.

What it has struggled with is after-sales service. 

Eureka Forbes has historically relied on franchise partners, allowing new players like Urban Company, the on-demand home-service platform, to build lucrative businesses in this space.