The Sajjan Jindal-led JSW Group, which is already among the largest steel makers in the country, is now expanding into the industrial and decorative paints business—a move that will see it take on heavyweights like Asian Paints and Kansai Nerolac among others.
According to Parth Jindal, managing director of JSW Paints, India’s paint industry has doubled to Rs 50,000 crore from Rs 25,000 crore in seven years and could touch Rs 1,00,000 crore in the next seven years. However, 75 per cent of the industry is already organised with well-established players. Jindal says the industry in its current form is cluttered, and JSW Paints, keeping customers at the centre, aims to make buying paints an easy job.
“The entire paint industry and the entire journey to purchase paints for the consumer has become extremely cluttered and extremely complex. There are too many different types of paints available and its just become an extremely confusing proposition for the customer. We are going to simplify the entire process and keep the consumer at the core of our belief and make the entire process extremely simple,” said Jindal.
For instance, the paints will be available in three segments— luxury, premium and value. Any paint and colour within the category will have the same price, unlike the current market scenario, where price of a paint differs on the colour.
JSW is entering paints through two verticals—industrial (coil coating) paints and decorative paints. The industrial paints facility is located at Vasind on the outskirts of Mumbai, with a capacity of 25,000 kilo litres per year. This will not just fulfil the requirements of JSW Steel, which is the largest supplier of colour-coated steel in the country, but also cater to other players. Over the next 18 months, JSW Steel’s colour-coated steel capacity will increase to 2 million tonnes per annum from 0.7 million tonnes, which should drive JSW’s industrial paints business too.
Separately, the company has also set up a facility in Vijaynagar, Karnataka, to manufacture water-based decorative paints. In the initial phase, this facility will have a capacity of 1,00,000 kilo litres per yer, which will be doubled to 2,00,000 kilo litres in the next 18 months.
The plan is to launch JSW Paints across south and west India by September and nationally by 2022. It has invested Rs 600 crore in the initial phase, which will go up to Rs 1,000 crore over the next 18 months. The aim is to garner 10 per cent market share over the next 8 years.
