The earliest engineering firms in India, such as Jessop and Company and Burn and Company, seem to have grown up in response to the demand for construction of houses, boats and various other structures as the British consolidated their position in India. With the growth of the jute industry in Bengal and the cotton industry in Bombay, the demand of the mills for various types of structure naturally spurred the growth of engineering. But the general engineering firms came to depend mainly on public works such as roads, bridges and irrigation channels, and on the railways – public and private – for sustenance, particularly when famine or trade depression affected the level of private demand.

Practically all of the more important engineering firms were owned and controlled by Europeans. But they by no means had easy access to the work on the various public works projects and railways. When the East Indian Railway was due to start, the carriages for the railway were lost at the Sand-heads in the Hooghly estuary; John Hodgson, the enterprising Locomotive Chief Engineer of the East Indian Railway, then set about building the carriages with the help of two local coach-building firms, and it was with carriages made in India that the first trip from Howrah to Pundooah was made in 1854.