Berger Paints India, the country’s second-largest decorative paint maker, is aggressively expanding and modernising its retail footprint across India, a move that could reshape how builders, homeowners and tradespeople engage with paint products on the ground. The company’s refreshed strategy combines scale with experiential retail design, signalling a marked shift from traditional shop-front distribution to interactive, customer-centric retail spaces that align with evolving urban and peri-urban consumption patterns.
Beyond adding outlets, the focus is on transforming physical stores into immersive hubs where consumers can explore colour, texture and finishes in real time, with dedicated zones for visualisation and product comparison. The retail expansion — led in partnership with a specialist design agency — touches more than 4,000 paint retail touchpoints nationwide, including the rollout or redesign of approximately 1,800 stores under a unified experience format.For India’s paint sector, where decorative coatings drive much of the organised segment’s growth, strengthening retail presence is both a commercial and civic play. As residential renovation and construction demand rises — buoyed by urbanisation and rising household incomes — paint brands must offer more than products; they need to deliver solutions and inspiration at the point of purchase. Industry analysts say this aligns with broader trends in retail, where physical spaces complement online research and bridge information gaps, particularly in smaller cities and towns still developing digital adoption.
Strategic retail expansion is also a response to competition. Berger Paints has been increasing its dealer network and tinting machine installations to boost access in under-penetrated regions and strengthen its brand in new growth corridors. A recent regional strategy highlights concentrated efforts in South India — including Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Telangana — where dealer density has lagged behind markets like Kerala and Andhra Pradesh, underscoring the company’s aim to narrow distribution gaps in key urban centres.The retail redesign reflects a deeper rethink of the role of paint stores in the sales ecosystem. Rather than functioning solely as transactional outlets, updated stores now offer live demo zones and experience lounges where homeowners and contractors can interact with products, visualise outcomes and make specification decisions with greater confidence — a crucial factor in high-involvement home improvement purchases.
Such experiential formats may boost brand recall in crowded markets and support more inclusive access to product information outside metro hubs. For builders, designers and urban homeowners alike, these retail spaces can serve as both technical resources and creative centres, helping to demystify choices in finishes and coatings.However, retail analysts caution that scaling and modernising physical networks requires balancing capital intensity with long-term sustainability, particularly in less dense markets where footfalls may be inconsistent. Integrating digital tools and strengthening supply-chain responsiveness will be vital to ensuring these expanded outlets fulfil both commercial and customer-experience objectives.
As Berger Paints’ retail footprint grows, the initiative reflects a broader industry shift towards experiential, design-led engagement — a development with implications for competitive dynamics, consumer expectations and the evolution of paint retail in India’s rapidly urbanising landscape.
