Beautiful painting!

The history of some companies is so fascinating. We came across one such story of India’s market leader in paints – Asian Paints.

It was in 1942, the civil disobedience movement was at its fervor and the British, all of a sudden, banned all import of paints. People had to depend on Shalimar Paints and the very expensive foreign brands. That’s when four men - Champaklal Choksey, Chimanlal Choksi, Suryakant Dani, and Arvind Vakil set up ‘Asian Oil and Paint Company Private Limited’. 

Scratching their head for a name for the company, they just randomly picked up something which seemed good enough from the telephone directory. By 1945, the company was well known but they came up with an innovative strategy – instead of selling the paint in tins, they started selling it in small packets with just five colour choices — black, white, red, blue and yellow. To speed up the distribution process across the country, it tied up with small distributors in every corner.

That’s how Asian Paints became a household name. That year, it clocked a revenue of Rs.3.5 lakh and by 1952, its turnover rose to Rs.23 crore – a huge sum at that time.

And remember their iconic mascot – the small boy with paint bucket and brush in hand? It was created by legendary RK Laxman and the company launched a campaign, inviting people to give a name to the figure and the winner would get Rs.500. And way back in 1952, it got some 47,000-odd entries and there were two winners, both from Bombay and both suggested the same name - ‘Gattu.’ The prize money was shared between the two – Mr.BN Rele from Girgaum and Mr.DS Aras from Sion.  

Well, its 78 years since then and the company stays ahead and so does Gattu!

s 3.5 lakh in the same year. This strategy helped them pick a steady pace and by 1952, the annual turnover of Asian Paints was Rs 23 crore, a sum that was considered to be huge back in the day.