Tracking India’s Paint Market Leaders: October 2025 Performance

October 2025 was a month when numbers told a deeper story than campaigns. The festive quarter, usually a period of optimism for the paint sector, unfolded under unprecedented competitive pressure. The Paint War, triggered by Birla Opus’s aggressive expansion and JSW Paints’ acquisition of Dulux, reshaped not just market shares but business psychology. Behind every percentage point of growth and every dealer incentive lay a strategic recalibration.

The market no longer moved in linear patterns. Established leaders found themselves defending margins against new entrants with war chests, while consumers oscillated between premium loyalty and price-led curiosity. October’s data became more than an end-of-quarter report card; it became a real-time reflection of how resilient, agile, and adaptive India’s paint majors truly are.

The Performance Dashboard of October 2025 reveals a sector in flux - one where leadership is being redefined not just by scale, but by adaptability, ecosystem thinking, and the ability to create meaning beyond price.

Asian Paints: Leadership Under Pressure, Not in Peril

For more than five decades, Asian Paints has been the industry’s bellwether, commanding roughly 55 percent market share. October 2025 reaffirmed both its dominance and its vulnerability. The company’s response to rising competition was visible on three fronts - brand reinforcement, dealer defence, and cost control.

The relaunch of its iconic “Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hai” campaign on October 13 symbolised a subtle but strategic repositioning. It shifted the conversation from discounts to emotion, reminding consumers that home painting is not a transactional decision but a sentimental one. The campaign’s success was not only cultural but financial: digital engagement metrics suggested a surge in brand recall despite reduced market-level price elasticity.

However, Asian Paints also faced the steepest challenge in protecting its dealer base. With Birla Opus and JSW offering 20-25 percent higher margins in some regions, the company rolled out loyalty reinforcement programs and dealer financing tie-ups to prevent defection. Its decision to expand design and décor services also proved prescient, helping capture higher-value customers even as volumes faced pressure.

Operationally, the company increased capex for automation and supply-chain optimisation, signalling confidence in the long game. The leadership narrative emerging from October was clear: Asian Paints remains the fortress - slightly dented, never defeated.

Berger Paints: Expanding the Heartland

Berger Paints, India’s second-largest player with about 18 percent share, played the long game in October. Rather than engaging in head-on price wars, it doubled down on what it knows best - volume-driven regional expansion and rural network depth.

In Tier-2 and Tier-3 towns, Berger used October’s festive tailwinds to consolidate brand loyalty through small dealer events, painter partnerships, and “festival-ready colour” schemes. Its strategy was less about defending margins and more about owning the next 100 cities. By the end of the month, Berger had added over a thousand new retail tinting points and launched pilot outreach programs for its “WeatherCoat Long Life” range, aligning durability with affordability - a message that resonated strongly outside metros.

While ad spends rose moderately, Berger maintained relative cost discipline through targeted marketing rather than mass campaigns. It emerged as the quiet achiever of the month - not grabbing headlines, but steadily strengthening its moat.

October’s data suggested that Berger’s resilience lies in its adaptability. Its decentralised management and region-specific campaigns ensured that it didn’t need to mirror Asian Paints’ emotion or Birla Opus’s aggression. It played the middle ground well, positioning itself as the brand for practical aspiration.

Birla Opus: The Challenger Becomes Contender

No brand embodied the energy of October 2025 like Birla Opus, the Aditya Birla Group’s ₹10,000 crore bet on the decorative paint market. Within a year of launch, it captured a high single-digit market share, firmly securing its position as India’s third-largest paint brand.

The company’s playbook was straightforward but devastatingly effective - price disruption, dealer incentives, and visibility blitz. In October, it complemented those with its most ambitious consumer trust campaign yet - the “Birla Opus Assurance” program, promising a free repaint if the product failed within a year. The boldness of this offer flipped the competitive narrative: instead of being the newcomer seeking acceptance, Birla Opus positioned itself as the brand with nothing to prove and everything to guarantee.

Its distribution strategy was equally aggressive. Dealers in Maharashtra, Gujarat, and Tamil Nadu reported record incentive offers, while its marketing leaned into digital-first storytelling - an unusual move in a sector still dominated by traditional media.

By the end of the month, Birla Opus had achieved what few new entrants could: mindshare parity with incumbents. Analysts began referring to it as the “third pole” of India’s paint market - an indicator that the power structure was no longer bipolar but triangular.

JSW Paints + Dulux: Integration in Motion

If Birla Opus disrupted the market from the bottom, JSW Paints disrupted it from the top. The September announcement of JSW’s ₹9,000 crore acquisition of Akzo Nobel India (Dulux) became the strategic story of October. While the deal’s financial closure is expected in December 2025, its psychological impact was immediate.

The combined entity, with nearly 600 million litres of annual manufacturing capacity, emerged as a formidable integrated player across decorative and industrial coatings. The Dulux brand gave JSW instant credibility in the premium segment, while JSW’s financial muscle and local distribution added the scale Akzo had historically lacked in India.

October was a period of pre-integration planning - aligning operations, recalibrating dealer contracts, and mapping cross-segment synergies. Analysts predicted that by mid-2026, JSW-Dulux could challenge Berger’s position as India’s number two player. The real story, however, was not about scale; it was about portfolio balance. JSW now had the unique ability to play across both B2C decorative and B2B industrial segments, creating stability in a volatile market.

Its challenge ahead will be integration speed and cultural alignment - but in terms of ambition, JSW-Dulux has already redrawn the upper half of India’s paint leaderboard.

Kansai Nerolac: Resilience Through Diversification

Amid the battle for decorative dominance, Kansai Nerolac quietly reinforced its strength in industrial and automotive coatings. Holding between 12-15 percent share, the company used October not for loud campaigns but for strategic balance.

Nerolac’s industrial contracts with automotive OEMs and infrastructure developers acted as a stabilising anchor while its decorative line maintained selective participation in the festive rush. The company’s restrained marketing approach helped preserve profitability even as competitors stretched ad budgets.

By late October, Nerolac was signalling a subtle pivot toward sustainability - exploring low-VOC formulations and eco-friendly emulsions, aligning itself with the global ESG-conscious investor narrative. Analysts described its performance as “boringly stable” - but in a month of chaos, stability was strength.

The Rest of the Pack: Innovation, Agility, and Niche Strengths

Below the top five, a vibrant second tier continued to innovate and expand in October.

Indigo Paints, known for its quirky and experimental branding, continued its push in the premium texture and metallic finishes segment. Its nimble marketing and youthful positioning gave it strong resonance with first-time homeowners.

Nippon Paint, leveraging its global R&D capabilities, expanded its eco-friendly “n-Force” product line for the automotive aftermarket - an initiative that broadened its revenue base beyond decorative paints.

Shalimar Paints, one of India’s oldest brands, attempted a comeback through heritage-driven campaigns tied to national landmarks like the Rashtrapati Bhavan and Howrah Bridge - an emotional appeal to credibility in a credibility war.

Sirca Paints and Jotun continued to dominate their niches, particularly in wood coatings and protective paints, respectively. These companies demonstrated that while scale defines leadership, specialisation defines survival.

Reading the Metrics: More Than Just Market Share

Beyond the leaderboard, the underlying indicators of October 2025 reveal deeper shifts.

Ad Spends: Industry-wide advertising expenditure rose by an estimated 20-25 percent, reflecting a reactive market. However, engagement quality, not spend volume, emerged as the real differentiator. Asian Paints and Birla Opus dominated digital recall, while Berger led regional influencer outreach.

Dealer Margins: The average dealer margin expanded from 18–20 percent to 22–25 percent, an inflation that may not be sustainable. Brands offering margin bonuses to secure loyalty must now grapple with profitability trade-offs.

Product Mix: A gradual consumer downshift was visible, with mid-range emulsions seeing higher uptake compared to ultra-premium lines. Yet, premium players mitigated the impact through design service bundling and experience marketing.

Raw Material Sensitivity: The volatility in crude derivatives and titanium dioxide prices continued to squeeze margins across the board, particularly for smaller players without hedging capabilities.

Together, these metrics portray a market that is still vibrant but financially stretched — a race where revenue momentum is being bought at the expense of near-term profitability.

Watchpoints for Q4 FY25 and Beyond

As the sector enters the post-festive quarter, leadership teams are focused on four critical indicators:

1. Sustainability of Festive Demand: Will the October-November surge translate into structural volume growth or fade as a price-driven bubble?

2. Raw Material Costs: Any upward spike in crude or pigment prices could erase margin gains achieved through festive sales.

3. Dealer Loyalty Metrics: Monitoring dealer churn and product-stocking trends will reveal who truly controls distribution sentiment.

4. Strategic Moves of New Entrants: The next phase of the “Paint War” depends on whether Birla Opus and JSW Dulux sustain their aggression or pivot toward premiumisation.

October proved that competitive equilibrium is now dynamic - each quarter could bring new alliances, acquisitions, or product innovations capable of reshaping rankings overnight.

Conclusion - The New Playbook for Performance

The scoreboard of October 2025 tells a story of resilience meeting reinvention. Market leadership in India’s paint industry is no longer measured solely in litres or rupees but in adaptability, collaboration, and ecosystem integration.

Asian Paints continues to set the tone, Berger consolidates the heartland, Birla Opus embodies momentum, JSW Dulux redefines scale, and Nerolac exemplifies balance. Around them, a ring of agile innovators adds colour and complexity to an already vibrant market.

As the sector moves toward 2026, one principle stands out: the paint business has become a performance business - where every percentage point of share reflects not just sales, but strategy. The coming year will decide whether incumbents can defend their legacy and whether challengers can translate disruption into durable dominance.

Either way, October 2025 will be remembered as the month the scoreboard began to matter again - not just as a metric of success, but as a mirror of change.

GrowthJockey’s Perspective:

October 2025’s leaderboard proves that performance leadership has evolved from linear scale to strategic elasticity. At GrowthJockey, we interpret this as the maturation of India’s industrial sectors into data-driven performance ecosystems where capital, capability, and customer insight converge. The real KPI is adaptability: the ability to read volatility as signal, not noise, and to turn every metric into a decision advantage.

FAQs

1. Which company led the Indian paint market in October 2025?
Asian Paints remained the leader with around 55% share.

2. Which new entrant showed the strongest growth?
Birla Opus, capturing a high single-digit share within a year of launch.

3. What was the impact of the JSW–Dulux merger?
It created a top-tier player combining premium branding with large-scale manufacturing.

4. How did Berger and Nerolac perform?
Berger expanded regionally while Nerolac relied on industrial diversification for stability.

5. What will shape the industry in 2026?
Dealer retention, raw-material prices, and sustained brand innovation will determine leadership.