Why Pidilite can’t stop creating new categories and great brands

Pidilite Industries is one of the most unusual Indian companies that you can find. Set up in 1959 as a small enterprise by BK Parekh to make and market white glue, it has grown into a respected Rs 13,000+ crore giant.

What’s more, instead of being a faceless company that sells adhesives and construction chemicals, it has an array of brands led by one of India’s most loved names, Fevicol.

How has Pidilite managed to keep creating this marvellous cocktail of product innovation mixed with great advertising? Sandeep Tanwani, the company’s CMO, reveals what makes Pidilite tick.

Here are the excerpts. To watch the complete interview, visit YouTube.

Sreekant Khandekar: You have just completed a year at Pidilite after more than 20 years at Unilever. What struck you the most about this company when you moved in?

Sandeep Tanwani: Pidilite has always been about creating categories and then, within those categories, creating iconic brands. Two things which struck me were the innovation potential and the ability to create iconic brands in mostly underserved categories, which is, I think, a capability worth admiring anywhere.

It also hit me that there has to be a cultural recipe which has allowed Pidilite to do this again and again. Clearly, it is in the company’s DNA.

Sreekant Khandekar: Your flagship brand, Fevicol, was built on the back of television at a time when the medium was enormously powerful. It was created when mass media didn't see a lot of humour. Contrast that with today when people have moved online where there are countless funny videos. How can Fevicol stand out in this environment?

Sandeep Tanwani: There are a couple of aspects of Fevicol which are unique and which, along with humour, make the brand human and make the brand memorable. It has always been a shareable brand, and now, in the age of social media, anybody who rides the humour wave is bound to see higher shareability.

The way in which Fevicol has got into cultural parlance and into drawing room conversations, it is a people’s brand. So, one thing which we try to always remind ourselves is that we have to be culturally resonant. We are a quintessential Indian brand.

We thrive on taking a humorous take on some of the Indian cultural aspects. And that's why Fevicol transcends all kinds of heterogeneity that India as a market offers. The other thing we always remind ourselves is that Fevicol must connect with consumers strongly without talking about functionality.

We have liberated the brand from the functionality space and thus allowed it to transcend into the cultural space and become a great metaphor in the conversation. It is these aspects that have allowed Fevicol to stand out over the years. 

And lastly, I would say we have been blessed with Piyush (Pandey) and the ecosystem of Ogilvy as great partners who have been absolutely brilliant brand custodians. That consistency and ownership has been visible over the years.

Sreekant Khandekar: Moving beyond advertising: Fevicol is well known, and its penetration must be very high. So, where will growth for the brand come from now? 

Sandeep Tanwani: Although it's a highly penetrated brand, our endeavour is always to be on an active lookout for our user’s pain points and gain points. For example, we recently observed that as more and more younger people migrate to larger metros, they need to refurbish their furniture and interiors. We asked ourselves if we could help them change the aesthetic without redoing all the furniture or interiors. Can they just change the look and not the structure?

So, we came out with a product, Fevicol Relam, which allows a user to stick a new laminate on an existing laminate. This helps get around the messy business of refurbishing furniture. That's how we plan it.

There is a core, and then there are the innovations which get bolted on to the core.

Sreekant Khandekar: Very interesting. What are the big trends that drive your three main businesses – adhesives, waterproofing and, lastly, sealants and fillers? 

Sandeep Tanwani: First, there is rapid premiumisation at the top end. Many premium offerings, which solve some pain point related to aesthetics or turnaround time and save hassle, are being appreciated. These offerings are being rapidly adopted both by the user (carpenter) as well as by the consumer.

There is a great premium on speed. And this is a megatrend because you can also see how quick commerce has taken off in our country. 

And the third big trend that we are seeing is convenience. There is a lot of overindexing on convenience: consumers are time-poor, and anything that can allow them to reach the desired solution conveniently is finding a lot of traction.

Sreekant Khandekar: Pidilite has an amazing portfolio of brands. The figures of the revenue they each generate are not publicly available. But based on the many reports I have read, I’d estimate Fevicol’s topline is about Rs 3,000 crore; Fevikwik, Dr Fixit and M-Seal would do sales upwards of Rs 1,000 crore each.

As the CMO, how do you decide where you should invest and how much? It isn't like there's one big brand and all the others are pygmies. Moreover, they are spread across three business lines.

Sandeep Tanwani: That’s a great question. We look at our portfolio as three big buckets. The likes of Fevicol are in the core – this is the mothership, if you will. 

Then we have a bucket called Growth Categories, which would have brands like Roff (a tiles and stones adhesive). And then there are brands which we call Pioneers: these are the brands that make our portfolio future-fit. Here, we are trying to spot some trends we can build on and create new categories. 

Sreekant Khandekar: Could you give an example of a Pioneer brand?

Sandeep Tanwani: Sure. So, Fevicol and Dr Fixit would be part of the core. And till about two years back, Roff used to be a Pioneer.

Now, tile adhesives, where Roff operates, were not much of a category earlier. It was under-penetrated. But if you look at the macro trend, more and more people are using tiles. Earlier, tiles were used mainly in the kitchen and bathroom.

Tiles are now reaching the walls, even the exteriors. To some extent, they are even entering living rooms. Now, as you go vertical with a tile, you need a much better adhesive than cement. That’s why Roff has matured from a Pioneer to enter the Growth Category.

Another example of a Pioneer brand is ICA, which is an Italian wood finish. It is used extensively in interior designing to give a very different kind of effect on all the surfaces within a home.

So, basically, we create new brands and grow them to a certain stature – as we have done with Roff – where they become growth brands for us. 

And our principle is that our core brands must grow anywhere between 1x and 1.5x of the country’s GDP growth.

Our growth brands have to be in the range of about 2.5x to 5x of GDP growth. And then our Pioneers are the ones where we believe we can hit about Rs 100 crore in turnover in the next three years.

Those are the ones which require nurturing in terms of finding the right business model and understanding the consumer pain points. So, a part of the investment goes there. That's largely how we look at our portfolio.

Sreekant Khandekar: How does this translate into marketing investment? Because the variation in growth between these different buckets is enormous. 

Sandeep Tanwani: We keep core as the priority, and the growth brands are to be funded for a massive scale-up. Meanwhile, the Pioneers are funded enough for them to prove the principle of what they are trying and get the business model right. Once they are ready to be invested for scale, that's when we kind of shift gears.

Sreekant Khandekar: Fascinating. I wanted to ask you about Fevicryl, which is very different from all of Pidilite’s other brands. Its target audience is different – it is aimed at kids. It’s in the DIY (Do It Yourself) space. Therefore, its distribution is different. 

Meanwhile, kids are spending more time on mobile screens. How has that impacted Fevicryl? 

Sandeep Tanwani: Fevicryl has an iconic equity amongst people who love art and craft. Before joining Pidilite, I too used to think it was a kids’ brand. But a large part of Fevicryl's consumer franchise are adults who love painting – we are one of the pioneers in acrylic paints. 

Fevicryl is scaling up in a major way. We have a big on-ground presence where this whole artist community has been brought together by Fevicryl. And there are plans to ramp this up through innovations, not just in terms of formats, but also in terms of trends. For example, a year or two ago Fevicryl launched pastels, which have taken off big time. 

As we look more closely, we realise that there is so much more we could do with Fevicryl given India’s diversity. Bihar might have a very different expression of art form from the one in Maharashtra, for example. There is so much we can do to promote this kind of art form using Fevicryl’s equity. 

Sreekant Khandekar: As marketers go, what is the big stuff that is going to challenge them in the next three to five years?

Sandeep Tanwani: The change that is taking place in the space of AI and creativity promises to be a fantastic productivity booster. One of the biggest challenges would be how soon we can reskill ourselves to take advantage of that. This is something all marketers are conscious about. 

The other big change I'm seeing is that there is a convergence taking place between media, entertainment, and commerce. And that convergence is something we should all be very cognisant of. 

And then, of course, there is q-commerce, which has taken India by storm. Somebody who can connect these dots and make sense of it all will be the most successful. 

Mind you, there are no ready playbooks to deal with these changes. 

Sreekant Khandekar: That leads me to my last question: have the e-commerce and q-commerce waves impacted your business in any way?

Sandeep Tanwani: Our brands have been affected positively because both these channels bring in new consumer franchises. Brands like Shoefix and Fevikwik lend themselves naturally to quick commerce, right?! If something is broken, you need to fix it within 10 minutes. So I would say these channels are actually great for us and our business.