Nippon Paints, a leading eco-friendly paints manufacturer, is eyeing to achieve a market share of 10 per cent in the decorative paint segment in the next five years, from the present three per cent, a top company official said today.

“The company will consolidate its position in the South and maintain it in the West and Northern State to achieve the target,” President, Decorative Nippon Paint, Mahesh Anand, told reporters here.

Mahesh Anand, who was here to introduce a new Customer-centric Select Store in Tirupur, said that the company is also looking to strengthen its position by reaching out to people in tier II and III areas. “The company is planning to increase the depot network to 20 from the present 14 by 2018, so that distribution become easier,” he said.

Though Nippon Paints as a brand was yet to make a dent even in the South, it was available in close to 2,000 stores out of the 45,000 plus outlets selling paints across India, he said.

The company was registering an average annual growth of 15 per cent as against the national average of 10 per cent, it witnessed four to five per cent dip in business in the last two years and the recovery would happen in another two to three months, he said.

Attributing the lesser growth of the decorative paint sector to decline in in new painting segment and not so good economy sentiment Mahesh Anand said that there was also slight slump in real estate market.

Stating that the company has started a skill development centre for painters in Chennai, which already trained 100 persons, the official said that there was also plans to start such centres here, Madurai, Tiruchi and Tirunelveli.

On the store in Tirupur, he said the 2000-sq ft revamped store offers end-to-end painting solutions from products to painting services, which would be extended to other places and the painting service would be by professionals
trained at Nippon Paint Painters Training Academy.