It was February 1942. The world was at war. Bombs fell over distant cities. Empires trembled. And in a modest garage tucked away in Girgaon, Mumbai, four young friends dared to dream.
Champaklal Choksey, Chimanlal Choksi, Suryakant Dani, and Arvind Vakil—no more than twenty-years—saw something no one else did. World War II and the Quit India Movement had clamped down on paint imports, leaving India's walls bare and its paint market barren. Where others saw crisis, they saw canvas. They named their venture almost casually, picking a name from a telephone directory: The Asian Oil and Paint Company. What started as a coincidence went on to become destiny.
They had no factories, no investors, no guarantee. What they had was trust in each other, faith in India, and the quiet conviction that every home deserved colour. They stirred resins by hand over coal furnaces. They built from nothing. And slowly, stubbornly, beautifully—they grew.
By 1952, the company posted an annual turnover of ₹23 crore. By 1957, its R&D team—still working with rudimentary equipment—had developed a process to produce international-quality resins in a simple coal furnace, hand-stirred. That same year, a plant rose in Bhandup, Mumbai. The empire was being built one wall at a time.
In 1967, just 25 years after four friends gambled on a garage, Asian Paints became India's number one paint manufacturer—and it has never relinquished that throne. Today, the brand commands approximately 50 per cent of India's organised decorative paint market, making it twice the size of any rival in its category. It operates 27 manufacturing facilities across 15 countries, serving consumers in over 60 nations—a global giant forged in wartime scarcity.
Gattu: The Boy Who Sold a Billion Walls
In 1954, Asian Paints did something quiet revolutionary. It approached RK Laxman—the legendary cartoonist who had already given India its beloved Common Man—and asked him to create a mascot. Legend has it that Laxman was lost in thought, cigarette smoke curling upward, when he saw the image of a mischievous boy taking shape through the haze. Gattu was born.
A contest was held. Forty-seven thousand entries poured in from across the country. Two strangers, both from Bombay, submitted the same name: Gattu. They split the ₹500 prize. The little boy with the paint bucket and the paint-spattered grin became one of the most recognisable mascots in Indian advertising history—rivalling the Amul girl in cultural stickiness. His tagline — Any surface that needs painting needs Asian Paints—was not just an ad line. It was a statement of ambition.
Following Gattu's introduction, Asian Paints' sales surged tenfold. The mischievous boy had done what no advertisement could—made the painter's paint weave into every homeowner's dream. He was irreverent, accessible, and deeply Indian. For nearly five decades, he lived on tin cans and billboards, in rural markets and city newspapers, carrying the brand into hearts that had never thought about paint at all.
‘Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hai’
India changed in 1991. Economic liberalisation threw open the windows of aspiration. A new middle class emerged one that didn't just want shelter; it wanted beauty, identity, expression. Asian Paints, as it had always done, sensed the shift before anyone else.
Ogilvy's Piyush Pandey—the mind behind some of India's most iconic campaigns—worked with the brand to craft a new philosophy. The result was one of the most enduring lines in the history of Indian advertising: ‘Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hai’—every home has something to say.
And immediately, Asian Paints was no longer selling paint. It was selling an identity. Your home wasn't just four walls—it was a declaration of who you are, what you love, where you've been, and who you've become. The campaign wove itself into the cultural fabric of the country, be it Diwali, a wedding, a new baby, a homecoming—these were not occasions to repaint—they were occasions to tell your story.
Gattu had to retire in 2002, but he did so with tremendous grace—the management reportedly went personally to inform RK Laxman, honouring the man who had given the brand its soul. When Laxman passed in 2015, Asian Paints published a tribute poster featuring the little boy one last time because some farewells are acts of love.
The Colour of a Legacy
What followed was a masterclass in brand evolution. ‘Har Ghar Kuch Kehta Hai’ became a television series, inviting audiences into celebrity homes. It migrated to digital as Where the Heart Is—five-minute episodes on YouTube and JioStar that blurred the line between content and commerce. Campaigns like ‘Socha Bhi Nahi Hoga’ and ‘Mera Wala Mood’ turned colour into conversation. #PeopleAddColour told the story of paying guests who became family—a human insight so true it ached.
Asian Paints became only the second Indian company—after Infosys—to be featured in Forbes' list of Best Under a Billion companies. It was conferred the Sword of Honour by the British Safety Council. ColourNext, the brand's annual colour forecast, established it as a thought leader in global aesthetics. It pioneered computerised tinting in the 1990s, launched one of India's first brand websites in 1998-99, and built the Beautiful Homes retail ecosystem into over 600 experiential stores.
From decorative paint to wall textures. From waterproofing to bath fittings and kitchen solutions. From a commodity to a category. From a garage in Girgaon to 60 countries across the globe. Asian Paints didn't just grow—it transformed an entire industry, dragged it from functional to emotional, from product to poetry.
