Who Says Cement Is Grey And Stodgy?

Product positioning Dalmia Bharat’s Craft Béton opens up luxurious possibilities in concrete

- Chitra Narayanan

Tour through the Craft Béton website or its newly opened experience centre in Delhi and you will never look at cement with the same eyes again. That dull, grey, dusty item that comes in boring gunny bags and melds with sand and stone to construct buildings has been re-imagined into high-end lifestyle items by the Dalmia Bharat group. In the process, it may have created a luxury brand (Béton means concrete in French) that may eventually become a profit centre on its own.

From funky furniture, designer floor and wall tiles that can lift up homes, bathroom accessories, wash basins to artefacts that are functional yet make an arty statement, Craft Béton by Dalmia Bharat showcases a versatile range of possibilities in cement.

Sundeep Kumar, CEO, Craft Béton, says it all started three years ago when the cement-to-power group invited internationally acclaimed designers to create products out of cement. The idea behind the initiative was to change the image of cement from boring to beautiful. The challenge thrown to the designers — two were from India, the others from Poland, Mexico and Israel — was to create functional items overlaying art on it.

Story behind each piece

Each piece that Craft Béton has a story on how it evolved. For instance, an exquisite magazine rack priced at ₹17,000 created by Mexican designer Cynthia Mijares Rodrigues is in the shape of a monarch butterfly — an iconic species in North America — and symbolises the metamorphosis that happens when a person steps into the world of reading.