Home Run

Asian Paints has been a faithful painting partner for millions of house owners across India. Now, its CEO KBS Anand plans to extend the company’s offerings to other parts of their homes.

- Samar Srivastava

The biggest eye-opener was that no one is interested in paint,” says Kanwar Bir Singh (KBS) Anand, managing director & chief executive officer, Asian Paints. This was in 2000 after a year-long customer engagement exercise by Asian Paints. And even for a 21-year veteran of the company, at the time, the finding was a revelation.

We are sitting in his office at Santacruz in suburban Mumbai. And Anand, 61, is talking about what was, clearly, a turning point for Asian Paints. It was the longest-ever customer engagement the company had done till then, conducting 850 interviews and group discussions. What they found was that paint as a product was very low on people’s minds, only coming to the surface every three to four years when it was time for home improvement. Second, it was the woman of the house who was the actual customer. And there was a third, rather self-affirming realisation: The only brand customers know and recall is Asian Paints.

Things might have changed since then but one thing has remained—Asian Paints, founded by Champaklal Hiralal Choksey in 1942 and the market leader since 1967, has over the years only managed to strengthen its lead.

Whether it is being at the forefront of recruiting from the Indian Institutes of Management or installing the first mainframe computer or doing demand forecasting, Asian Paints has always been a company that has set the path for the industry to follow.

Its own path, over the last 16 years, was set by the findings of the customer engagement. “It laid the blocks for almost all the new initiatives the company made over the next decade and a half,” says Anand.