Birla Opus Sees 6–8% Market Share By March, Paint Demand Still Elusive

Birla Opus, the paints venture of the Aditya Birla Group, is set to exit the current financial year with "high single-digit" market share and much of this growth seems to have come at the expense of Asian Paints.

"Consumers are now starting to ask for (the) Birla Opus brand by name," Chief Executive Officer Rakshit Hargave told NDTV Profit on Thursday. "We had set a few key performance indicators when we launched a year ago, and we are on track to meet all of them — high single-digit market by the end of March quarter, we are already in about 6,000 towns and close to covering 50,000 dealers."

Channel checks indicate that Birla Opus gained a 350-basis-point market share in the first nine months of the current fiscal, a large part of which came from Asian Paints, while others saw a minor erosion of 10–20 basis points. The company was targeting around 6–8% market share by the end of the current fiscal.

Birla Opus is gaining traction through attractive schemes and discounts for both dealers and consumers amid an urban slowdown. It offers higher dealer margins of 10–12% and has lower setup costs, according to people aware of the matter. In contrast, Asian Paints, which leads in sales and dealer network, faces challenges in terms of cannibalisation and lower dealer margins of 4–5%.

Many dealers are unable to install a new company's tinting machine mainly due to space constraints. Birla Opus has designed and created a tinting machine that is 40% smaller in size and with it, it can reach more dealers.

Birla Opus also provides higher incentives to painters, ranging from Rs 100 to Rs 600 per 20 litres, depending on whether the product is in the economy or luxury segment. In comparison, Asian Paints provides an average incentive of only Rs 40–50. Birla Opus' pricing, excluding extra grammage, is 3–7% lower than those of incumbents.

While lower crude oil prices — a key raw material for making paints — is providing margin respite for paintmakers, slower demand recovery remains a concern. "Paints demand has been sluggish in the last six–eight months, and we are still waiting for clear trends that can indicate a demand revival," Hargave said. "However, we are hoping that demand will pick up materially in the second half of fiscal 2026 with improving consumer sentiments ahead of the festivals, and savings from tax cuts."

Aditya Birla Group's flagship Grasim Industries Ltd. has launched a Birla Opus paint studio in Gurugram on Thursday, making it the only company to own and operate such an experience centre in the country. The 2,000-square-foot studio offers advanced visualisation tools that will help consumers to mix colours and create custom shades. They can also preview how their chosen colors will look in real-life settings, Hargave said. The studio offers about 170 products with over 2,300 colour choices.

It plans to build 10 more such studios mostly in metros and tier 1 cities over the next two months. These are New Delhi, Mumbai, Navi Mumbai, Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Lucknow, Jaipur, Ahmedabad and Surat.

Birla Opus has also partnered with franchise partners, which own and operate 'Opus paint galleries' in the smaller tier two and tier three cities. At least 300 such galleries are currently operational.

While an option for retail sales will also be available at these studios, the primary sales channel would remain dealers, according to Hargave.

The flagship company of the Aditya Birla Group had set a bold target of achieving a revenue of Rs 10,000 crore within three years of operation. However, during their launch in February last year, the company had said that revenue numbers of Birla Opus would be available only after all six plants were operational.

Five out of Grasim's six greenfield paint plants are now operational, bringing the total installed capacity of decorative paints under the Birla Opus brand to 1,096 million litres per annum. The Kharagpur plant will commence trial runs in the first quarter of the next fiscal, according to the company.

Birla Opus has so far invested 90% of its planned investment of up to Rs 10,000 crore in paints capital expenditure in a bid to become the second largest player in the country's Rs 76,000-crore decorative paints market.