C Venugopal is new GM marketing at Goodlass Nerolac

C Venugopal is the new general manager – marketing at Goodlass Nerolac Paints. He replaces Gavin D’Abreo and will be reporting to Anuj Jain, vice-president, marketing.

At Goodlass Nerolac, which is the second largest paint manufacturer in India, Venugopal, who has 12 years of marketing experience, has his task cut out. His priorities include setting up the systems and procedures in the marketing department, restructuring brands (if required), harmonising brand architecture, traffic and focusing on ad spends.

Goodlass Nerolac is the largest manufacturer of industrial paints with a 43 per cent market share. In the decorative paint segment, however, it lags behind leader Asian Paints with a 14 per cent market share. Its key brands in the decorative paint segment are Nerolac Suraksha, Excel, Allscapes and Goody. Suraksha, which is the exterior paint brand, is one of the strongest in its portfolio. Excel, on the other hand, is the premium exterior paint brand, while Allscapes and Goody are the interior paint brands. Allscapes is a premium product, whereas the latter is a “value-for-money” brand.

What is worth noting about the company is that it has set an ambitious 20 per cent growth target for the next fiscal. It is looking to achieve this in the decorative paint segment. “In the industrial paint segment, we are clocking a healthy growth of about 12-15 per cent year-on-year,” says Venugopal. “The decorative paint segment is where the action lies.”

The company hopes to do this by speaking to relevant consumers, spending on the right growth engines and identifying price points vis-à-vis competition. One brand that it has identified as a growth engine for the future is Goody. This brand, incidentally, is not advertised heavily in mass media, though Suraksha, Excel and Allscapes are. Ambience Publicis, for the record, handles brands Suraksha and Allscapes, while Interface does corporate advertising and Excel is visible in Kerala.

The company hopes to make inroads into markets down South with brands such as Excel, since it does not have a strong presence there. Venugopal attributes this to distribution-related issues, which the company is tackling, he claims. Currently, Goodlass Nerolac is strong in the North, East and West with a network of 11,000 dealers. It has manufacturing facilities at Chennai, Mumbai, Kanpur, Ahmedabad and Lote Parshuram near Chiplun in Maharashtra.

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