The Indian Paint Industry

The Indian paint industry has been growing at an average rate of 13% over the last five years. However, the per capita paint consumption in India is only 1.2-1.4 liters. The industry is less than half the size of the Chinese market by volume and about one fifth of the U.S. market by volume. Even Sri Lanka and Pakistan have higher per capita paint consumption.

India's market is dominated by the decorative paint and coatings segment. Architectural coatings largely used in households constitute almost three-fourths of the market's value. The other large segments are automotive OEM paints, automotive refinish paints, protective coatings and powder coatings.

There are many players in the Indian paint market. The top four companies-Asian Paints, Berger, Kansai Nerolac and ICI (India)-constitute more than 5.5% of the Indian domestic market. In addition to these, there are more than one thousand other companies in both the organized and unorganized sectors. The unorganized sector itself constitutes 25-30% of the market.

A number of foreign players have subsidiaries in India including: Jotun (powder, marine and decorative); Akzo-Nobel (powd