We’ll continue finding new ways to gain market share: Inderpreet Singh, Birla Opus Paints

It’s not often that a new brand launched in a cluttered category, with strong legacy players, disrupts the category to an extent, that even the market leader is forced to take note. The brand is Birla Opus Paints, the exterior & interior wall paint company - housed under Aditya Birla Group’s Grasim Industries – entering a market estimated to be worth around Rs 70,000 crore with the vision of achieving Rs 10,000 crores in revenues in three years.

Officially launched in the market in April 2024, with a clear three-pronged strategy - superior portfolio, a strong brand, and new set of experiences powered with technology which has aided the brand’s growth. The company invested significantly in R&D to build a superior product portfolio that performed better than competition in a blind test environment with paint contractors, applicators etc.

Says Inderpreet Singh, Marketing Head, Birla Opus Paints, “Only when we were convinced that our products are superior – based on parameters such as finishing, waterproofing etc - we launched in the market. We were also very clear from day one that we need to build a very strong brand to break the clutter and enter into people's minds. The idea was to touch heart as that’s when people remember you, you get stickiness in people's mind, are seen to be relevant and consumers are ready to evaluate the product.”

This a one-year service guarantee where the brand commits to completely redo the painting service free of charge if the paint doesn't meet customer expectations within the first year. This assurance is specifically designed to cover all weather conditions across India's four seasons. This is an is an additional guarantee, over and above the existing product warranties that extend up to 14 years and represent traditional coverage for the paint products themselves, including defects and performance issues.

The key distinction being that the assurance focuses on repainting service delivery, while warranties cover product replacement and performance guarantees. Singh states, “It's a very simple, but a very powerful consumer experience as a proposition, which didn’t exist in the paint industry. Our entire proposition was about product quality and what better way than to tell our consumers that we’ll ‘put money where our mouth is’. For us, this is not a consumer promotion, it's a hardcore brand promise.” What was interesting to see was the response of the dominant market leader, as per media reports, which has seen its market saw go down by close to 7%. The dominant player took out a front-page ad in a leading daily which spoke about the market leaders’ ‘warranty promise’, cheekily adding, ‘it’s never about assurances for a year.”

Another focus was digital experiences that helped retail and institutional consumers visualise interiors and exteriors. The three-part approach worked as Singh states, “We've been in a good upward growth trajectory. We are on track to what we have committed to the market, reaching Rs 10,000 crore business, at the end of three years of full operation, and make it a profitable business and growing healthily.”

He adds, “In our own internal assessment, as an entity put together our revenue market share crosses 10% in the decorative paints market, including Birla Opus Paints and Birla White Putty* revenues combined. This demonstrates our strong positioning across different segments of the construction and home improvement sector.”

Painting The Town With Star Power

For the ‘Birla Opus Assurance’ campaign featured the brand ambassadors Vicky Kaushal and Rashmika Mandanna along with actors Ranveer Shorey, Murali Sharma, Seema Pahwa and Jaaved Jaaferi in separate films. The choice of brand ambassadors Singh says was based on the brand positioning. He explains, “We realized early on in our brand building that the biggest issue that we face is inertia, as though we had the Birla name, Birla Opus Paints was new to the world of paints. We were also conscious that many consumers may wait for a certain time period before trying the brand. We decided to use our biggest weakness as our positioning, turn it on its head and make it into area of strength.” He adds, “That’s why our proposition was ‘Naye Zamane Ka Naya Paint, saying new means better, progressive, younger and high-tech. This led to Vicky Kaushal and Rashmika Mandanna being a perfect fit as they are the new upcoming stars in the Indian film fraternity. We are leveraging them to get better awareness for our business and brand.”

The campaign was a thorough a 360-degree effort across channels with multiple assets created for mass reach, which stems from the ambition to make a Rs 10,000 crore entity pan-India. Looking at the monies spent since launch, “a lot of money” is on linear TV, CTV, outdoors with significant amount also directed to OTTs, print, radio. A big quantum of money is also spent to build the business bottom-up in BTL including experiential, expositions etc.

And looking ahead, the company will continue its media spends across channels as this has paid dividends and Singh says, “The money being spent to build the business or brand media will not change. This has powered us to reach a stage where today our brand recall is at 80%, With the brand recall established, now we'll move to the next stage of brand preference.”

Concepted to be distinctive and disruptive, The Indian Colors League campaign, co-developed with the JioHotstar team, worked well for the brand. Celebrating the love for cricket, the idea was to connect the game with the business and brand. Singh explains, “Every team has a primary colour and our business is colours. When two teams played against each other, we merged the two team colours to create a new colour. This played out before the match and it was well received and was a visual delight.”

The Distribution Play

In just 18 months, Birla Opus Paints’ distribution network has expanded significantly. It has a presence across 8,000+ towns nationwide, supported by 137 strategically located depots that ensure complete product portfolio availability and quick dealer servicing. The company has built India's second-largest depot network with panIndia coverage that enables it to service its dealer network effectively. Birla Opus Paints’ has set an ambitious goal of establishing presence across all cities with populations exceeding 100,000, and achieved this milestone in June, ahead of the July target. Singh states, “Our focus is to be present throughout India, in all towns and across all consumer segments.”

A Colourful Festive Season

Asked about a campaign that Singh is proud off in the last one and a half years, he immediately says, the recent digital film done for this year’s Ganesh Chaturthi. Rooted in the brand’s Duniya Ko Rang Do philosophy, he says, “Ganesh Chaturthi is a time of celebration, bringing homes and neighbourhoods alive. With this heartwarming film, we wanted to tell this story through the eyes of a child welcoming Bappa home for the very first time. Paints play a unique role on such occasions, transforming spaces and adding colour to the memories that will be cherished for years.” He continues, “We are really happy with the outcome that came through. We are very clear the brand has to resonate and had to break the clutter. The campaign got a lot of recognition with very little money spent, that tells you about the power of content.”

With the festival season officially kicking off, Singh says that “it cannot be a one-fit-all approach and we'll be choiceful to pick which festival for which region”, emphasising, “It's a time when the number of people painting their homes increases. So, it’s a match made in heaven. We look to see how we can use our brand and its purpose of spreading joy and beauty in other people's lives, and marry it with festivals. It's about the idea. If you crack a good idea, it could be the best strategy. We would like to target not just festivals but moments in people's life. We will continue to activate those moments and build a brand which, when people think about it, they should associate this brand with building joy, magic and beauty. These are the associations we want to build for our business.”

Looking ahead, Birla Opus Paints’ brand building efforts will continue at the same pace with the high-intensity spends on brand building continuing. The company has already built a large portfolio with close to 180 products and 1,400 SKUs. Singh says, “We have identified a few places where we can further solve our consumer needs, so more NPDs and introductions are happening as we speak. We've just launched our wallpaper range. There are some more innovations coming. We will continue to build newer experience through the use of technology. We will continue expanding our distribution as we are present in most towns, but not in all the shops in those towns. We'll continue finding new ways to gain market share, but most importantly, gain love and respect from all our consumers across India.”

*Birla Opus Paints operates under Grasim Industries, while Birla White Putty is part of UltraTech Cement. Although these are separate corporate entities, both fall under the broader Aditya Birla Group umbrella.