Saint-Gobain India is making significant investments across all its businesses, and plans to grow both through organic, and inorganic routes, to achieve its target of achieving revenue of ₹36,000 crore by 2032, a top official said.

The company ended 2023 ,with a turnover of ₹13,500 crore, growing 20 times in the last two decades. “We have made huge investments in India, and quite a lot of them were greenfield,” B Santhanam, CEO-APAC, and India Region, told businessline in an interaction.

He said that the company was seeing good growth in the current year, given the boom in the housing sector as well as industrials. “We shape the market because we have a strong market leading position in all our businesses.”

Along with topline growth, the company’s other metrics have been strong too, with a return on investment in excess of 30 per cent, Santhanam said, adding that the company generates strong cash flows with low working capital. It has around ₹2,000 crore cash on its books.

It has an ongoing capex of ₹6,000-8,000 crore that started in 2021, and will go up to 2025. A major portion of that capex is slated for greenfield, and brownfield expansion, and about 15 per cent for mergers, and acquisitions.

The company, which is a market leader in glass, and gypsum-based products, and construction materials, had made investments of around ₹13,200 crore by the end of 2023, including acquisitions.

In March, it signed an MoU to invest ₹3,400 crore in Tami Nadu over five years. The investments will be both greenfield, and brownfield across different businesses such as gypsum, glass wool, different types of glass, and ceramics, among others.

With the investments, glass wool, and stone wool capacities will more than double. In the glass segment, its capacity will be augmented by a fifth, while plasterboard line capacity, will increase by 30 per cent.

M&As

Acquisitions are a major part of the growth strategy of the company, and Santhanam said that it was constantly on the lookout for bolt-on target opportunities, which could be in related areas, core adjacencies “where there is growth.”

In the last two to three years, the company has done several such acquisitions, “and that has given us a nice heft in growth.” He added that small acquisitions could be funded by the company itself, and if it were large, it would seek the support of its parent.

He said that it would look to acquire in areas such as ceramics, or segments, where it does not have a significant presence such as infrastructure. There were medium-sized companies in the insulation space that would be ideal acquisition targets.

In the recent past, Saint-Gobain completed the acquisition of Twiga Fiberglass, a company based in Uttar Pradesh, India, for ₹532 crore. It had acquired Twiga to strengthen its presence in interior, and façade solutions in India, after its recent acquisition of Rockwool India, a stone wool maker, for ₹100 crore.

With the growth that it is targeting, the company is expecting its contribution to its parent’s revenues, to rise over the next several years, to high single digit from low single digit now.

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