Shares of Praj Industries gained 8% on August 14 after the company reported first-quarter results that beat analyst estimates, with profit more than doubling year-on-year.

The Pune-based engineering firm posted a profit after tax of ₹11.6 crore for the quarter, an increase of 118.87% from ₹5.3 crore in the same period of the previous year. The result also came in well ahead of street expectations, standing 84.13% above the ₹6.3 crore profit projected by analysts in a Bloomberg poll.

Praj Industries (NSE: PRAJIND) is a process engineering and technology company headquartered in Pune, Maharashtra. It supplies plants, equipment and solutions across businesses including ethanol and other biofuels, brewery and alcohol production, water and wastewater treatment, and critical process equipment and systems. The company's shares are listed on the National Stock Exchange of India and the BSE.

The ethanol and biofuels business ties the company to India's Ethanol Blending Programme, under which the government has targeted 20% ethanol blending in petrol by 2025-26, a timeline advanced from the earlier 2030 goal. That policy push has driven distillery capacity expansion across the country, shaping the demand environment for the plants, equipment and technology that suppliers like Praj provide.

The quarterly numbers cover the June quarter, which corresponds to the first three months of the Indian financial year running from April to March. For project-driven process engineering firms such as Praj, a single quarter's profit is usually read alongside order inflow, order backlog and execution progress, since revenue recognition moves with project milestones rather than steady product sales. Those order-side metrics, together with the pace of India's ethanol blending rollout, are what market watchers follow in the company's coming results.

This report is based on coverage by CNBC-TV18 Markets.