Company Overview

Asian Paints is India's largest paint company and ranked among the top ten Decorative coatings
companies in the world with a turnover of INR 66.80 billion. Asian Paints along with its subsidiaries
have operations in 17 countries across the world with 23 paint manufacturing facilities, servicing
consumers in 65 countries through Berger International, SCIB Paints – Egypt, Asian Paints, Apco
Coatings and Taubmans.

The company has come a long way since its small beginnings in 1942. Four friends who were willing
to take on the world's biggest, most famous paint companies operating in India at that time set it up as
a partnership firm. Its started in Kapadwanj in the Kheda district in the state of Gujarat as a collection
of small plants. Over the course of 25 years Asian Paints has became a corporate force and India's
leading paints company. Driven by its strong consumer-focus and innovative spirit, the company has
been the market leader in paints since 1968. Today it is double the size of any other paint company in
India. Asian Paints manufactures a wide range of paints for Decorative and Industrial use.

Situational Analysis

We analyse Asian paints using the 5C framework. 5Cs stands for Customer, Competitor, Company,
Collaborator and Context.

Customer

Asian Paints’ product sections and the associated customer profile can be summarised in the
following table:

Product Sections Customer profile

Paint Ancilliaries This section deals with paint supplements like
primers and putty and the customer database
comprise the home segment, wood industry
and related manufacturing industries
Automotive Asian paints caters to this section through its
brand Asian PPG. Some of the major
customers are Bajaj Auto, General motors
India,Hyundai Motors India, Mahindra and
Mahindra,Tata Motors
Decorative Paints The decorative section comprises of
emulsions,enamels and distempers and are
employed by the homes,offices,wood and
metal finishing industries and related
manufacturing industries
Industrial Paints This section comprises of protective coatings,
floor coatings, road markings, powder
coatings and caters to heavy industries,
capital goods, manufacturing and
infrastructure segments.

Competitor

Asian Paints’ notable competitors in the Indian market space include Kansai Nerolac and Berger
Paints

The Indian paint industry is at the crossroads. All most all-major paint companies have expanded or
are expanding its capacity substantially. With demand rising slowly competition is becoming
increasingly intense.
Company
Asian Paints aims to become one of the top five Decorative coatings companies world-wide by
leveraging its expertise in the higher growth emerging markets. Simultaneously, the company intends
to build long term value in the Industrial coatings business through alliances with established global
partners.

Collaborator

Asian Paints has harnessed the powers of state-of-the-art supply chain system using cutting edge
technology to integrate all its plants, regional distribution centres, outside processing centres and
branches in India. All the company's paints plants in India, two chemical plants, 18 processing
centres, 350 raw material and intermediate goods suppliers, 140 packing material vendors, 6 regional
distribution centres, 72 depots are integrated.

The supply chain runs through a wide spectrum of functions right from materials planning to
procurement to primary distribution. It has played a pivotal role in improving operational efficiencies
and creating agile procurement, production and delivery systems. It has also enhanced the flexibility
of operations, lowered output time and reduced delivery costs, while improving customer-servicing
levels and profitability.

The Supply Chain Management is backed by IT efforts that help the company in demand forecasting,
deriving optimal plant, depot and SKU combinations, streamlining vendor relationships, reducing
procurement costs and scheduling production processes for individual factories

Context

The paint industry is an important contributor to the national economy in producing industrial coating
and decorative paints. Decorative paints available in wide range of combination account for 70% of
the coatings total production while industrial paints share the balance of 30%. This rate is
diametrically opposite to the trend in the industrialized countries where industrial paints account for
70% and Decorative paints for the balance of 30%.

Under these market conditions, each of Asian Paint’s three business units—Decorative, Industrial,
and International—has registered strong growth in the past few years, partly because of the
company’s competitive cost structure.By accurately measuring and analyzing all the costs associated
with paint manufacturing and adding a suitable operating margin, the company is able to sustain its
growing income.

Financial Highlights
Asian Paints’s quarterly performance over the last few quarters is summarised below :
Jun09 Sep09 Dec09 Mar09 Jun10

Sales Turnover 1,164.82 1,386.46 1,277.71 1,296.09 1,491.14

Other Income 16.22 86.45 22.07 19.11 17.41
Total Income 1,181.04 1,472.91 1,299.78 1,315.20 1,508.55
Total Expenses 920.68 1,108.78 1,017.67 1,067.95 1,190.49
Operating Profit 244.14 277.68 260.04 228.14 300.65

Marketing Strategy- Past and Present

The story of the evolution of Asian Paints as a brand is interesting. The brand now
has an iconic status in the industry thanks to some blockbuster big ideas from O&M.
The brand once positioned as a mass market brand has evolved itself to a higher
plane. Asian Paints realized the need for brand building even during sixties. But at
that point of time, the company had a wide range of brands/sub brands. The focus of
the company was on product innovation and service network and managing quality
proposition. The brand focused on mass and rural market. Asian Paints had a mascot
called Gattu who was created by the celebrated cartoonist R K Lakshman. These
efforts made the brand a leader during the late sixties.

Then the company realised that although volume justified the leadership position,
share of mind for the brand was very low. That was the result of the mass
segmentation adopted by the brand. Rightly so because the industry was driven by
channel driven promotions, building a brand at that time was" uncommon sense".
During 1983, the company tried to reposition the brand as a premium brand. Asian
Paints initiated the corporate campaign aimed to position the company as the
number one player in the industry.

Asian Paints’ "Celebrate with Asian Paints" was born out of a research study
conducted by Asian paints that concluded that consumers typically associated
painting houses with festivities. The campaigns were carefully crafted and there were
different campaign for different regions. These campaigns effectively enhanced the
brand equity of Asian Paints and established itself as a premium brand. More than
that , this campaign ensured an emotional connect with a brand in a low involvement
category. The brand also phased out many sub brands and rest of the sub brands was
brought under Asian Paint's umbrella brand.

The idea that the Asian Paints brand is about people and homes and homes reflect
the people living in it was developed by O&M in the late 2000s. Hence " Har Ghar
Kuch Kehta Hai" translated to " Every Home has a story to tell". This campaign is a
perfect example of a brand laddering up and connecting to a higher level in the mind
of the customer. The campaigns reinforced the brand as a premium emotional brand.
Along with the campaign Asian Paints also ran parallel ads for its sub brands. Saif Ali
Khan endorsed the premium brand Royale .For Apex Ultima, the campaign was
highly localized and was different in different markets.

The recent campaigns include:

 Ask Aparna – Asian Paints’ online paint solution portal for the home segment

 Royale Play- Asian Paints ‘customised premium emulsion

 Apex Ultima- Asian Paints’ premium colour binder solution

Some recent marketing initiatives include :

 Colour Next :- Asian Paints Colour Next is the colour palette categorised into five
colour themes – Urbanite,Aura,Smart,Comfort,Gallerie and Nature networks lending
a unique identity to spaces
  The Colour Signature Store:- A company owned experiential store for customers to
see colour, touch and feel finishes and make their home painting simple and exciting.

 Royale Shyne:- Provides higher sheen finish for customer interiors

Marketing Strategy- Going forward