Anupam Gupta's The Rise of Asian Paints reveals success of an entrepreneur

If you want to understand what makes Asian Paints such a successful company and how the mind of a first-generation entrepreneur works, this book is a must read

The Rise of Asian Paints: Champaklal Choksey, a Doyen of the Indian Paints Industry

Author: Anupam Gupta

Publisher:  Penguin

Pages: 288

Price: Rs 699

My first exposure to Indian paint companies was in 1978, when I was a young summer intern at Rediffusion Advertising in Calcutta. I had the opportunity to see the much-acclaimed “Whenever You See Colour, Think of Us” ad campaign being prepared for presentation to the client, Jenson & Nicholson. The paint industry image leader then was Dulux (from ICI), though Asian Paints was seen as a market- or bazaar-savvy company that was the market leader in sales terms.

Asian Paints was a much sought-after company on campus and not less than half a dozen of my fellow IIM Calcutta batchmates joined the company. Some of them stayed with the company for their entire career. Jagdish Acharya headed the Asian Paints-PPG joint venture as his last assignment, while K B S Anand went on to be the chief executive office  and managing director of the company from 2012 to 2020.

During my career in advertising I got to work on the ad campaigns of Kansai Nerolac Paints, though our office was just a floor below the corporate office of Asian Paints at Nirmal Building, Nariman Point, in Mumbai

I have been an ardent fan of Asian Paints for all the reasons outlined above. Why?

Asian Paints is unique in many ways. It is an Indian company that managed to face and take on worthy multinationals. It is a company that transitioned from a family-owned, family-managed enterprise to a family-owned, professionally-managed company with no major public disputes. It is a stock market darling for all the right reasons. So when my friend and fellow podcaster Anupam Gupta met me a few years ago to talk about a book he was planning to write on Asian Paints, I was all ears. I thought the book would be a simple story about the growth of a rare Indian company. I was wrong.

The book The Rise of Asian Paints  takes the point of view of one of the founders of Asian Paints, Champaklal Choksey. There were originally four founders and the book tells us in unequivocal terms that the first among the equals was Champakbhai.

Mr Gupta traces the origin story of the company in great detail; initial investments, first factory, the first capital raise and so on. To weave together the story, the author has interviewed not less than a 100 people associated with Asian Paints in the past and the present. This includes the founders’ family, key leaders of the company, past CEOs and more. It must have taken him many calls and emails to set up these meetings in multiple cities. In the end, we get a very engaging read that traces the way the company was born, and how it changed under the watchful eyes of Champakbhai.

A few things stand out. Asian Paints was one of the first Indian companies to build a cadre of management professionals. In order to do this, it started recruiting from IIMs. This was after the company had become the market leader. It was the founder’s vision that the company needed leadership talent to keep growing and to continue to be a dominant leader.

Asian Paints was also one of the first Indian companies to invest a huge sum in computerisation of their operations. The complexities of multiple SKUs (stock keeping units), production planning, inventory management at depots and more were facilitated through the use of computers. Even the biggest of big MNCs in India were followers in the adoption of information technology compared to Asian Paints.

Asian Paints’ story paints a vivid picture about how the company expanded its production capacity through ambitious new plants, each operating at a higher level of efficiency than the earlier one. Backward integration was yet another masterstroke. So was their journey into countries like Fiji.

Asian Paints changed track in the 1980s from a company that was focused on the paint dealers to becoming a fully consumer-focused company. Influx of MBAs and the hiring of an ad agency partner (Ogilvy & Mather) played a vital role.

The book is full of interesting anecdotes from Champakbhai’s life and the values he held high. He sold his shares in the company when he thought it was the right time and, as the author explains, co-incidentally passed away the same day. Undoubtedly his legacy lives on.

As an added bonus, Mr Gupta has provided a number of short appendices that cover the growth of paint industry in India, the rise of IIMs, the evolution of computer culture in corporate India, the changing leader board at BSE Sensex and more. All these add to the book’s charm.

If you want to understand what makes Asian Paints such a successful company and how the mind of a first-generation entrepreneur works, the book The Rise of Asian Paints is a must read. Meticulously researched, well packaged and written in an engaging style, this is a book that does justice to a business visionary and a great company he left behind.

The reviewer is a best-selling author of 11 books. He co-hosted the podcast “The Last Brand Standing” with Anupam Gupta, the author of the book under review