Premium surface solutions market in India has an interesting player – Formica. With its range of sustainable, innovative and technologically advanced surfaces including laminates, the company is fast catching the fancy of the premium-end of the market. BuildingandInteriors spoke exclusively to Ajay Khurana, Managing Director, Formica India Pvt. Ltd. to understand the company’s offerings and its road ahead in the Indian market.
B&I: How has Formica’s journey been in the Indian market?
Ajay Khurana: We are working towards playing an important role in the premium surfaces market in India. This is strikingly different from what everybody else is doing – the low-price high-volumes game. We are not into the volumes game. I would like to compare our market to those of brands like Mercedes, BMW and Audi. Numbers don’t matter to us in-terms of volumes. Our teams have a clear mandate to not go after numbers but to address the aspirational side of the market.
With the backdrop of Formica having been through a transition globally (from Fletcher to Broadview Holding) and the erstwhile India operations been through a reboot, I am quite pleased with the growth we have seen over the last 2 years. So, it’s an exciting journey and this very excitement is the basis of our strategy going forward.
B&I: Being premium in the surfaces business is a challenging proposition. How do you differentiate Formica from the other players in the market?
Ajay Khurana: Well, I would say that what Formica offers in the Indian market has no competition. For example, we have our Homapal metal laminates (Made in Germany) range with real metal insert. Now, these kind of highly engineered surface solutions would offer the market a much more ‘practical’ surface solution rather than, say pure metal sheets. Laminates have many advantages in terms of its weight, ease of fabrication, the variety on offer, etc. over pure metal sheets.
To give you another example – A part of the range in Formica – FENIX® (Made in Italy) is carbon-neutral with an acrylic surface achieved Electron Beam Curing in-house. Made with advanced technologies, FENIX® offers extreme-matt appearance, soft touch, anti-fingerprint surface and thermal self-healing of superficial micro-scratches. And to top it all its not produced in a press like a Laminate, its produced with a propriety technology developed for producing FENIX. So, it’s innovations like these which differentiates our product-portfolio from others in the Indian market. It’s an inspiration for all Matt surfaces globally.
With our R&D at the global level, the manufacturing processes and the product outcomes usually set industry benchmarks. As I said, our solutions are premium, we are not into the numbers/volumes game. We have been diligently developing a strong ecosystem of distribution partners and specifiers (architects and interior designers). Again, architects and interior designers who are looking at premium surface solutions would find Formica’s range quite exciting.
B&I: What kind of communications you have for architects and interior designers?
Ajay Khurana: Till now, we have gone via word of mouth and some limited exposures. We are gradually getting our communication strategies in place and would be going after for each of the product-lines we sell in India. The Flag ship showroom in Delhi is a one step forward in this direction. Additionally, we take the A&D community every year to Arpa Italy to showcase our innovation, state-of-art manufacturing and our technological superiority. Architects and interior designers are amongst the core audience for Formica. We are getting into an overdrive mode to fine-tune our communication for this audience via digital media.
We have had some great response from this community. They appreciate not only the aesthetics and sustainability but also the technology which goes into our range of surface solutions. The unique attributes of our solutions are a big differentiator for architects and interior designers in their project outcomes. This differentiation would also be paving the way for our growth in the segment.
B&I: What’s are your growth geographies?
Ajay Khurana: Metro cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Chennai and Ahmedabad are strong focus markets for us. We will be opening a showroom in Bangalore in 2024. We are gradually looking at all the major cities but within these cities, metros is where we see more action. Being a premium surface solution company, Formica’s 80% of growth will continue to come from the metro cities.
B&I: What kind of revenues you are looking at?
Ajay Khurana: If you look at 2021 and 2022, two clear years when things started normalising, we have been doubling our sales numbers of our premium products FENIX and Decometal. Though the starting base was small, yet it is very encouraging since the segments we are in are premium. Going forward, we are targeting a turnover of Rs. 200 crores by 2027.
