Grasim Industries Limited

Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Q4 FY26 earnings conference call of Graphene Industries. As a reminder, all participant lines will be in the listen-only mode and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should we need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing start and zero on your touchtone phone. I now hand the conference call to Mr. Ankit Panchmatia, Head Investor Relations of Graphene Industries. Thank you and over to you, Mr. Ankit.

Thanks. Good evening and thank you for joining Grasim fourth quarter and financial year end 2026 earnings call. The financial statements, press release and presentation are already uploaded on the websites of stock exchanges and our website for your reference. For safe harbor, kindly refer to costly statement highlighted in the last slide of our presentation. Our management team is present on this call to discuss our results and business performance. We have with us Mr. Himanshu Kampanya, Managing Director, Grassim Industries and Business Head, Birla Opas Paints. Mr. Hemant Kadil, Chief Financial Officer, Grassim Industries. We also have with us Mr. Jayan Dugle, Business Head of Chemicals, Cellulosic Fashion Yarn and Insulators Business. Mr. Wadiraj Kulkarni, Business Head of Cellulosic Fiber Business. Mr. Sachin Rahai, CEO, Birla Opas. and Mr. Sandeep Gumravilli, CEO, Birla Pivot. Let me now hand over the call to Mr. Hemanshu for his opening remarks. Over to you, sir.

Good evening, everyone, and thank you for joining Grasping Quarter 4 earnings call. Happy to share that FY26 has been another landmark year in Grasping's journey of transformation a journey that has steadily evolved the company from being a leader in select manufacturing businesses into a diversified platform of high-growth, future-oriented enterprises. Over the last several years, we have consciously built capabilities across manufacturing, consumer-facing businesses, digital platforms, financial services, and next-generation building materials ecosystem. The outcome of these investments are in our results. Consolidated revenue stood highest at Rs. 1,75,431 crores or exceeding $18 billion in U.S. dollar terms, registering compounded annual growth rate CAGR of 18% over period FY21 to FY26. It's truly remarkable to note that Grassin's standard of revenue have also reached an all-time high of Rs 41,039 crores, showcasing an impressive compounded annual growth rate of 27% during the same period. What we are witnessing today is the emergence of a structurally stronger grapheme with multiple engines of growth, sharper strategic clarity and enhanced resilience across cycles. The key pillar of our transformation has been our unwavering commitment towards building leadership positions across every business in which we operate. Historically, Grasim has built category-leading business through sane operational excellence and disciplined execution. Today, their philosophy continues to guide our expansion into new age opportunities like Pains and B2B e-commerce business as well. Starting with Pains first, I want to Take you back to a moment not too long ago, when we announced entering the decorative paints business in year 2021, the market had questions. Plenty of them. Could a newcomer truly challenge an industry terminated by deeply entrenched incumbents with decades of brand loyalty, distribution network, and pricing power? Was this ambition too tall? Today, I'm here to give you the answer. In Q4 FY26, Villa offers delivered revenue growth of 52% year-on-year on a like-to-like basis. Further, excluding CWIP, on a like-to-like basis, the growth trajectory rises to 71%. In an industry where single-digit growth is celebrated, we have doubled our top line in one year. There is a growth of 100% revenue in FY26, versus FY25. The FY26 performance is heartening despite the business was still not under its full-scale operations as current food plant was commissioned in October 2025. But revenue alone does not tell the full story. What truly matters is market share because market share in Pange is trust made visible. As per internal estimates, The decorative paints industry revenue stood approximately at Rs. 15,500 crores in Q4 of FY26, including listed and unlisted paint majors, putti, wood finish and waterproofing companies and others. However, this includes the industrial paints and other non-decorative revenues. Our revenue market share expanded by approximately 90 basis points quarter on quarter strengthening our position as the number 3 player in the organized decorative range sector. The FY26 revenue market share expanded by 370 basis points over FY25. When you combine villa offers with our villa wide putty business only, we are now nearing the number 2 position in Indian decorative range. That is not a distant aspiration anymore. It is within striking distance. Let me take you through key enablers of Payne's performance. Firstly, on the distribution front, Villa Opus expanded its presence across 11,500 towns, crossing 50,000 dealers' build marks. With 146 depots, Villa Opus ensured serviceability at industry benchmarks The institution sales channel has built a sizable foundation and grew 43% quarter-on-quarter and 212% year-on-year with over 10,000 sites built in quarter-four FY26 alone. Below-office products now have 70-plus specification approvals from multiple governments and other departments across cities with a similar number under various stages of approval. The solution sales channel is working on a robust pipeline of 45,000 sites in various stages of work across 650 plus towns. Secondly, the team continues its focus to drive secondary sales from dealer counters to contractors and consumers. The strong quarterly revenues have been possible on back of strong secondary by over 4.5 lakhs active contractors who applied superior villa office products. The 10% free paint promotion continued on 10 and 20 litre packs across all emulsion top coats and waterproofing range, excluding sub-economy top coats and undercoat primers. The strong relationship with paint contractors, the key influencers, continued to scale strongly on back of digital first foundation platform through a contractor app Opus IDs helping the team to engage on a scale level. In conjugations with the centrally controlled tinting machine analytics show strong colorant and shade consumption across geographies pan India. With nearly 37,000 active tinting machines in operation, the tinting data continues to guide decision making and understanding of consumer consumption trends. Villa offers continues to uplift the contractors' and painters' workforce with industry-based schemes and loyalty benefits which remain unmatched even today, besides working on programs to build painter skill sets and non-monetary benefits including well-being and education support for his family. The repeat purchase by contractors is given on back of superior quality which helps their reputation in the market and with the customers. Villa Opus continues to grow steadily also amongst the architect and interior designer. In short, AID influenced the segment where that partner network has now crossed 3,000 active firms across 60 cities, estimated to reach the second largest AID network in the industry. Thirdly, on the product front, Villa Opus added 42 new products in FY26, majorly in A in-house wallpaper, B, launch of painting tools under sub-brand Artish, C, waterproofing products under sub-category All-Dry and many more in the immersion and enamel range. With this, the product portfolio expanded to 218 products and 1,850 plus SKUs serving a wide spectrum of customer preferences and market segments. Willow offers soft, robust demand for its emulsion and waterproofing products, where revenue market share has crossed double-digit mark. The premium and luxury products contribution steady at 65% by value across all categories. Billa Offers continues to benchmark its product offering with a competition in real-field environment and even now, 75% of Billa Offers product rank number one In product security versus like-to-like competition, base is blind product test by specialist applicators across emulsions, waterproofing, enamels, wood finish, distemper, etc. Fourthly, on the brand front, one out of every two consumers spontaneously recall Villa Opus brand. This is no mean feat. Villa Opus brand continues to be built on its already number two position in unaided top of mind recall and increasing its cap with earliest number 2 and number 3 legacy players. The brand has a strong 90% plus awareness which is built on back of continuous innovative campaigns. The recent high decibel campaign in ITL 2026 featuring 10 cricket celebrities to campaign a new era of claims from individual endorsement to a collective validation, voice echoing Mabee Opus, supporting companies' product security, has garnered major traction. Look out for our latest Mabee Opus campaign with existing and new celebrities endorsing uniqueness of Villa Opus products. On its mission of enhancing customer experience in organized retailing in off-range Villa Opus exclusive branded franchise retail outlets, hit a major milestone, crossing 1,200-plus stores across 700-plus towns. As per our estimates, this is the largest organized retailing network in India, now elevating Pains Per Case experience not just in metros, but in mid- and small towns, including rural areas. Our premiumization efforts continue with expansion of our full-stack GST-compliant and attractive GST, transparent, affordable professional painting services, Paintcraft, now available in over 6,000 pin codes through paint galleries across 400 towns. To our understanding, this is amongst the only professional painting services offering attractive financial options with 6- and 12-month PMIs at nearly no additional cost, an important tool in this inflationary environment. In conjugation with our industry-first service warranty through Opus Assurance campaign, Villa Opus Plaincraft continues to build brand trust and brings in lakhs of leads and thousands of project registrations and contractor enrolments where Villa Opus products and services were eventually delivered with Opus Assurance. The fifth strong pillar is the installed capacity of 1,332 million litres per annum which is 24% of the industry capacity and the brand remains focused to drive its revenue market share in line with the capacity share in the mid-term. The utilization is steadily increasing across plants and with the rising output scale-up of our sixth plant, Kharagpur, which was commercialized in Q3 FY26, the average distance traveled by a product has come down by over 30% helping in optimizing of logistic cost while improving serviceability to the market. Now let me share updates on price hikes and raw material situation. As you will recall in the last investor call, Willow offers proactively shared announcement to raise dealer prices by 2-6% in January and February 2026 across range of products. This increase was to test the channel and consumer reaction by bridging the gap with industry fears in this first phase of pricing. I am happy to share that the initial response to the price gap reduction is encouraging with primary and secondary sales continue to be strong during this fourth quarter. We are therefore delighted to share that in March 2026, Villa Opus on its own crossed the coveted 10% revenue market share mark based on nationwide retail study commissioned by us. I'll give you a moment to observe this. In April 2026, Bill of Us announced its second and third phase of price increase to offset the raised input cost. These multiple price increases have been staggered for implementation within quarter one of FY27. A large percentage of decorative paints, raw materials and entire packaging material is linked to crude derivatives. The volatile geopolitical environment and steep depreciation of our currency against dollars have resulted in spiraling of cost of goods to as high as 20-25% of COGS and we are still counting the impact. This level of increase is unprecedented And even now, the raw material prices are unstable and unpredictable. Through these increases, Willow offers have tried to cover the input cost escalation. However, if such global, unless persist, raw material prices could further escalate and may remain elevated for a foreseeable future. We understand the industry has never seen such high inflation that has forced the entire industry to take multiple price hikes back to back. This VUCA situation makes demand forecasting difficult and we need to closely monitor the situation as impact of price rise will slowly be felt by consumers and contractors in second half of quarter 1 and entire quarter 2 by 27. April 2026 primary sales performance remained in line with March and Villa offers continues to monitor the secondary sales trend closely on a weekly basis along with price elasticity of demand. With the inflation impact on input costs expected to continue until much after the war comes to an end, its impact on medium-term consumer demand remains uncertain as demand elasticity curve will be fully tested in this period. Despite these cost pressures, the company will continue to offer 10% free paint consumer proposition. In spite of forced price increase, what I can confidently say that Villa offers remains committed to driving market share gains and focus on our ambition to become number two player at the earliest, while we steer business towards guided Rs. 10,000 crore profitable revenue in the third year of full-scale operations. Shifting focus to second new business, Villa Pivot, which represents Grassim's commitment towards digitally enabled B2B e-commerce ecosystem. I want to take you to a world that most people never see, but one that powers everything around us. Every building you walk into, every road you drive on, every factory that produces the goods on your shelf, behind all of this sprawling, fragmented and deeply insufficient supply chain for raw materials. Steel, cement, chemicals, polymers, bitumen and other building materials. These are the building blocks of India's growth story and for decades securing them has looked the same. Phone calls, handshake, opaque pricing, delayed deliveries and limited access to credit. It's a market measured in hundreds of billions of dollars and yet until very recently it operated almost entirely offline. That is the opportunity we saw. That is why we build our pivot. One of the primary challenges is the highly fragmented supplier ecosystem, which makes it difficult for buyers to identify and engage with reliable vendors. Additionally, the absence of transparent pricing often leads to mistrust and suboptimal purchasing decisions. Many businesses, especially MSMEs, also grapple with working capital constraints, which hammer their ability to procure goods efficiently and on a scale. Further complicating the procurement process is the inconsistency of supply as well as inefficiencies in logistics that can result in delays and increased costs. Product discovery remains limited, restricting access to a wider range of goods and innovative solutions. Finally, there is significant gaps in technology adoption among MSMEs, limiting their ability to streamline procurement operations and benefit from digital advancement. By focusing on these critical pain points, Birla Pivot aims to create a more integrated, transparent and efficient B2B procurement ecosystem. Coming to financial performance of Birla Pivot, the pace of scale-up has been extremely encouraging ahead of our revenue guidance. Let me start with a number that I think captures the momentum better than anything else. Our revenue for Q4-26 more than doubled on YYY basis. This business is in a striking distance away from our annual revenue guidance of Rs. 8,500 crores. Now in a business that is barely a few years old, doubling revenue is not just growth, it is validation. It tells us that the market was waiting for someone to solve this problem at scale and we are doing exactly that. What is driving this? It's not one thing. It is all cylinders firing together. New buyers are joining the platform at an accelerating pace. Existing buyers are combining back with larger, more frequent orders. We are adding new product categories, expanding new geographies. Every lever we track active buyers, average transaction value, transaction volumes are steadily moving up. This was also a seasonally strong quarter and we captured the demand beautifully. Now let me paint the picture of how wide our B2B commerce reach has become. Villa Pivot is now delivering to over 5000 PIN codes across more than 400 cities and we have crossed 5000 retail touchpoints. Think about that for a moment. From metro construction sites to tier 3 towns where contractors is building a school or a small factory. We are reaching them. We give them access to the same quality products, the same transparent pricing, the same reliable logistics that were previously reserved for the largest players in the main market. This is not just commerce, that is democratization. And our product portfolio keeps expanding. We are now scaling categories like steel, bitumen, copper and aluminum ingots and polymers partnering with leading Indian and international brands to offer a breadth of SKUs that no single distributor could ever match. We are becoming the one-stop destination for building materials procurement in India. But here is what truly sets Villa Pivot apart. This is not marketplace with catalog and checkout button. We have built an integrated operating system for purpose built modules working in concert. Also, what gives us a unique edge is that we are not a startup parachuting into this space. We are a grassroots industry, part of the Cabila Group, with deep relationships across the building materials value chain, from cement to chemicals to metals. Our supply-side credibility, brand touch, and on-ground presence are modes that no pure-play digital platform can replicate overnight. We are still in the early innings. Revenue has more than doubled. But the runway ahead is enormous. Our focus going forward is clear. Deeper buyer engagement with smarter AI-driven insights, expand our product categories and geographical footprint, scale our embedded finance capabilities so more MSMEs can participate in India's growth and relentlessly improve the platform experience so that once a buyer comes to build a pivot, they never want to go back to the old ways of doing things. Before I hand over the call to Hemant for financial performance and covering other businesses, let me spend some time on macro scenarios. We are living in a period where the world is simultaneously witnessing extraordinary opportunities and unprecedented uncertainties. Across continents, businesses and governments are navigating a rapidly changing global order shaped by geopolitical tensions, inflationary pressures, supply chain realignments, technological disruptions, climate concerns, and changing consumer aspirations. Crude oil prices and volatility in raw material costs continues to impact manufacturing and global trade. Logistics networks that once prioritized efficiency are now being redesigned for reliability and strategic security. Across sectors, from chemicals and metals to technology and consumer goods, organizations are balancing growth ambitions with cost discipline and operational agility. At the same time, the world is undergoing one of the biggest technological transformations in history. Artificial intelligence, automation, digital platforms, data-led decision-making are reshaping industries at an unprecedented pace. The competitive advantage today is not merely scale, but the ability to innovate faster, adapt quicker, and stay closer to the customer needs. Yet, amidst these global challenges, there is also optimism. Emerging economies, especially India, continue to demonstrate resilience and long-term growth potential. India today stands out as one of the fastest-growing major economies, supported by strong domestic consumption, infrastructure investments, digital transformation, manufacturing expansion, and a young entrepreneurial population. However, in the backdrop of a recent caution expressed on mindful spending and responsible The message for businesses and households alike is clear. This is time for calibrated optimism and disciplined decision-making. While India continues to remain one of the world's fastest-growing major economies, global uncertainties including geopolitical tensions, commodity price volatility and inflationary pressure require a balanced approach towards expenditure and investment. The emphasis today is not on slowing aspiration but on prioritizing investment. efficiency, value creation, and long-term sustainability. For businesses, this translates into sharper capital allocation, cost leadership, and productivity enhancement. Such periods often strengthen economic resilience as disciplined spending combined with strategic investments creates a stronger foundation for sustainable growth in the years ahead. Let me now hand over the call to Hemant for his remarks. Over to you, Hemant.