As Pidilite celebrates 60 years of success, Shereen Bhan caught up with the minds behind the Indian adhesive giant Fevicol, chairman MB Parekh, managing director Bharat Puri and ad-man Piyush Pandey and asked about the story behind the iconic brand.

“I was asked to work on this brand by my seniors. I found some very receptive, very down-to-earth, very focused people on the Pidilite side and they gave me the license to fly,” Pandey said.

Speaking about what the future is going to be about global growth, global markets, acquisitions and about joint ventures (JVs), Parekh said, “In the process of identifying opportunities, sometimes we find segments where we believe that we should be there as a pioneer but we don’t have the technology or the experience to do it in a short time.

"Compared to earlier times, now things are moving faster and we cannot take as much time with other products as we took with Fevicol. Therefore, we believe that we should spot JV partners and get on with moving into categories, which are falling into that pioneer space,”

In terms of pioneer category, Puri added, “Pioneer categories are tomorrow’s growth categories. We just bought over India’s largest floor coating company, CIPY. CIPY is the provider of these high-end coating whether it be for parking lots, factory floors but we are also excited – we see this as an opportunity. We have a whole range of pioneer categories. Over time, we would like our portfolio to be half core and half pioneer plus growth.”

First Published:Jun 25, 2019 9:57 AM IST