Saint-Gobain has been growing at 20 per cent per annum over the past two decades. Speaking to Bloomberg TV India, the company’s India Head Anand Mahajan said Saint-Gobain, which has a turnover of ₹5,000 crore now, will ideally like to double sales every five years.

What are your capex plans in India?

We are a group in India. It’s not a company. It’s a single group, it comprises several businesses, which includes glass, which is a big one. But it’s certainly not the only one. We do not share too much in terms of financials.

We have a company called Grindwell Norton which is a publicly traded company. And, over the 19-20 years we have been in India, we have grown. Today we are an about ₹5,100-crore group in India and we have grown in this period at a rate at 20 per cent per annum. We are a profitable, multi-business group in India and we see significant opportunities for growth. India is one of the top destinations for investment for Saint-Gobain. We will be significantly expanding our glass facilities here. In fact, in Tamil Nadu, we are setting up our fifth float glass line in India. We are setting up the facility in second coater or high value added glass.

Therefore, it’s a significant investment.

Are you planning any strategic tie-ups or any new categories to enter?

We have several global businesses and a number of them are present in India. Distribution, which is the trading business of Saint-Gobain, is primarily European and we are not present in India in that business. So we will keep looking at what are the opportunities to grow. I don’t think it will be a lot with partnerships because there aren’t any obvious partners. But for us doing research in India is through a partnership. And we are working with customers, with IITs — we have today 20 projects, which we are doing with IITs. So those kinds of partnerships will be significantly more going forward, but not necessarily business partnerships. If an opportunity arrives or arises, we will certainly look at that.

In the last quarter your profits fell and you also had to shut down one of your plants because it was economically unviable. Is your business facing any kind of slowdown in India as well? Are you thinking of any kind of strategy for revival?

The plant or company that you are referring to is a very small company called Saint-Gobain Sekurit India Ltd.

This is actually not a big company. It’s a small company, it’s a very small part of the group in India. It is a part of the automotive glass business in India but it happens to be listed historically. It was a sick company which was acquired many years ago. It makes automotive glass primarily for three wheelers, for some commercial vehicles.

When it comes to long-term guidance and plans, Saint-Gobain has an aim to exceed sales to almost ₹10,000 crore by 2019. How is the target looking now, with the slowdown?

We are ₹5,000 crore. In an ideal world, we double that in five years. But the world is not ideal. India has not grown as much as we had expected even for us a year ago. And I think that’s more directional. It’s a target that we like to achieve. We are taking it as it comes. We are investing. It’s not holding us back, in terms of investments but ₹10,000 crore is directional; we would like to happen.

What are some of the growth drivers you see in this year?

I think in India, all our businesses have the potential to grow. I don’t think we have any laggards. So we have flat glass, plaster board, we have our industrial business — automotive glass and abrasive factories.

All our businesses have plenty of scope to grow subject to the economy growing. We have good strong market position and in certain areas we are penetrating and developing the market and all that is going extremely well. We are very happy with our progress in India.

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