Kuldip Singh Dhingra and Family

Berger Paints has held second position in India's decorative paints market for three decades. That is harder than it sounds.

Kuldip Singh Dhingra and his brother Gurbachan took over Berger Paints India in 1991 when it was a struggling mid-sized company losing ground to Asian Paints and incoming multinationals. The turnaround they executed was methodical: investment in manufacturing capacity, expansion of the dealer network beyond the urban centres where Berger had historically been concentrated, and innovations like express painting services that gave customers a reason to engage with the brand beyond the commodity transaction of buying paint.

Berger is now India's second-largest decorative paints company, with a dealer network of over 25,000 and manufacturing presence across multiple states. The family's achievement is less celebrated than it might be because Berger occupies a permanent second position in a market where Asian Paints' dominance is structural, built over 80 years of supply chain investment and brand building that cannot be replicated quickly. That Berger has maintained a clear second position, grown profitably and competed effectively against both domestic and multinational rivals in that context is a more substantial accomplishment than the ranking suggests.