How Consumer Companies Dominate Markets using AI & Analytics

By Sandip Sen

It is not tech majors alone who stay ahead using advanced data analytics. Even consumer companies have been doing the same for decades. And because some of them have been employing technology and business intelligence effectively their market share has grown and returns on investment and stock prices have zoomed.

Among the well-known consumer businesses that have successfully used AI and Analytics are Nike, IKEA, and several others. There is also a paints company known as Asian Paints which has dominated the Indian markets for more than 50 years employing advanced analytics.

How Asian Paints Innovated to Stay Ahead.

Asian Paints was born in a small backyard garage in Mumbai in 1942, and became a public company thirty years later in 1973. Today, the Asian Paints group stands to be the largest paint company in India and is in fact, more than twice as large as any other Indian paint company with nearly 60% market share. It also has manufacturing operations in 15 countries and is exporting to 60 other countries with worldwide sales of $ 3.75 billion in 2022.

Direct to Dealer D2D with Computerised Colour Matching

Asian Paints was a paints and chemical company that started a computerized inventory management system in the eighties that helped it to start it’s direct to dealer supply chain with an innovation called ‘computerized colour matching’ unheard of those days. By doing that it removed the 25% distributor margin and 30 days storage time at the distributor’s end in one shot and soon became the market leader

Business to Consumer B2C with Decorative coating

After the year 2000, it started its home décor range and made direct inroads to the consumer as a B2C company, in some cities even bypassing the dealer who lacked trained manpower. Decorative coating, colour consultancy, vaastu advisory, and custom painting services saw vertical integration with the paints and chemicals business all controlled from its centralised call center by the year 2008. Then it did a Amazon act. It was the first to introduce centralised warehousing with automated storage and retrieval systems, five years before Amazon entered India with its fabled Fulfilment Centres. So Asian Paints started collecting consumer data directly and also servicing consumers for value-added services. That helped it reduce its inventory circle. Today it rotates Its inventory 3.6 times a year (100-day rotation ) against 2.6 times ( 140 days rotation ) by the industry number two Berger paints. Here is a small YouTube video from our channel @ecothrust which narrates the journey.