From Dulux to dominance: Parth Jindal's race to redraw India's paints landscape
JSW Paints will fight "with everything we have" as it guns for the No.3 slot in India's decorative paints maker, said chairman Parth Jindal, days after his company snapped up the local business of Dulux-maker AkzoNobel for ₹9,000 crore. The company is prepared to pay the price of competition on margins, said Jindal, as it takes on top players Asian Paints, Berger Paints India and Kansai Nerolac Paints.
'We will achieve our target of breaking into the top 3 very quickly as both companies' products become available across our combined dealer network," a confident Jindal said in Hindi on Tuesday. He was addressing media at JSW Group's headquarters in Mumbai's Bandra-Kurla Complex business district.
JSW Paints and AkzoNobel India had a combined revenue of about ₹6,000 crore in FY25. This makes the post-acquisition entity India's fourth largest paints maker behind Asian Paints, Berger Paints India and Kansai Nerolac Paints, said Jindal.
'We will compete with the No. 1 player and whoever comes up against us," he said.
It will be a stiff challenge, though.
In January 2024, Aditya Birla Group shook the paints market with the launch of Birla Opus, pledging to invest ₹10,000 crore in six greenfield plants and raising concerns of a price war. Owned by listed company Grasim, Opus too aspires to break into the top tier of India's paints industry.
Jindal didn't shy away from taking potshots at rivals. He said the JSW-Akzo combine will be profitable from Day One, and won't have to burn cash to gain market share 'unlike others," hinting at Opus. Instead, JSW Paints will benefit from the complementary strengths of the two companies, according to Jindal. Akzo's Dulux brand, one of the most successful premium paints brands in India will add to JSW's line up of mass-market and affordable paints. The combined entity will have about 27,000 dealers across India, and all will sell paints from both the brands, immediately increasing their reach.
Target No.1 is Kansai Nerolac, which had ₹7,500-crore revenue in FY25.
Paint
JSW Paints will overtake the Japanese paints maker's Indian entity at the earliest, Jindal claimed, as it races to a goal of ₹10,000 crore annual revenue. In the industrial paints segment, where the JSW-Akzo combine is already the second-largest player behind Asian Paints, the company wants to be the top dog.
Industrial paints account for a quarter of India's ₹ 82,000 crore paints industry in terms of value. The remaining three-quarters value is from decorative paints, which are used to paint walls.
Gaining market share from competitors won't come without a price, Jindal admitted. As competition intensifies, manufacturers will compete on price to lure customers, he hinted.
"I believe that margins in decorative will be under pressure. We will fight with everything we have," he said, switching back to English.
When asked why AkzoNobel would quit a market as promising as India, Grégoire Poux-Guillaume, the company's jovial global chief executive, said the multi-national company struggled to give the kind of attention to its Indian business that is required to be competitive. However, the Dutch company will hold on to the powder coating business of AkzoNobel India, which is to be spun out of the listed company before the JSW deal is concluded.
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AkzoNobel will remain the technology supplier for industrial paints after the acquisition. Jindal said he was hopeful of convincing Poux-Guillaume to similarly partner up for decorative paints as well.
Given that the deal is yet to get the nod from India's competition watchdog, Jindal declined to comment on how the two companies will be merged. However, he said that AkzoNobel India will continue to be publicly listed, hinting at a possible reverse merger of JSW Paints into the acquired company.
Who will lead the combined entity? Jindal again declined to comment since the Competition Commission of India is yet to approve the deal. But he said it will benefit from the leadership of Rajiv Rajgopal, the incumbent CEO of AkzoNobel India.
The acquisition will be funded in roughly equal parts from three sources – internal accruals of JSW Paints, equity infusion from the promoter Jindal family, and private equity investors. The private equity funding has been secured, Jindal said. JSW Group companies could also step in, if funding from private equity players falls through, he said.
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