Birla's bold shade of ambition

GRASIM WANTS TO make a splash in the paints market.

- RAJESH KURUP

Birla Opus is an audacious initiative aimed at a double-digit share of the ₹80,000 crore decorative paints piece, sales of 10,000 crore and an operating profit, all in just three years. Kumar Mangalam Birla may just pull it off. Although there are more than half a dozen players in the space and some well-established ones like Asian Paints, Berger Paints and Indigo Paints, many of the recent entrants Pidilite and Astral-are relatively small. So the economics of Birla's big-scale operations could push Opus to the number 2 spot especially since paints is largely a B2B rather than a B2C operation.

While the product promises to be top-class, the game plan rightly focuses on building distribution. In the paints sector the distribution is as important, if not more important than the product itself. That's because it's the contractors and painters who decide which brand of paint is to be bought, rather than the end consumer. As Karan Bhatia, Partner, EY Parthenon, says, "The brand is important because that's what gives consumers the thought. But often the painter can influence the consumer."