Finolex Industries Limited, India's leading manufacturer of PVC pipes and fittings and PVC resins is now metamorphosing into a company engaged in the business of managing water. The move has been prompted by the looming water crisis in India, which is home to 18 per cent of the global population but has only 4 per cent of usable water resources. India's water crisis is accentuated further through distribution losses in the carriage of water. Finolex is therefore planning to create solutions that will help prevent such leakage.

As a part of this, the company is planning to increase its capacity of the PVC pipes and fittings' plants by approximately 40 per cent to 3.2 lakh tonnes through an additional capital expenditure of over Rs 90 crore spread over three years. The plants are spread across Pune, Ratnagiri and Masar near Vadodara. To reflect this new focus in business, the company also unveiled a brand new identity at a press conference held in Pune. "The company's new tagline of 'Tarakki Zindagibhar' (Progress for Life) promises a lifetime of prosperity to the consumer through water management," said Prakash Chhabria, Chairman, Finolex Industries Ltd.

The company will soon be aggressively communicating its new positioning through a television and radio campaign, a new website as well as cascade it into the social media. The company, which clocked a turnover of Rs 2,453 crore in 2013-14, is expecting to grow at a CAGR of 15 to 20 per cent over the next five years, which will see its turnover cross USD 1 billion. The new push is expected to contribute significantly to this vision. While the PVC resins business currently accounts for about one-third of the turnover, the share of the pipes business is expected to grow year on year. "In the process, the company is fast transitioning from the B2B business of PVC resin to B2C business of PVC pipes and fittings," Chhabria said.

"As an organisation we are keen on ensuring that the available water should reach the end user in the most efficient manner. Finolex understands the value of what water can do in the urban and rural context. A pipeline which brings water to a farmer's field is his lifeline. If this pipeline breaks down, the farmer stands to lose not only his crop but his entire livelihood. This is why we have laid a very high emphasis on our product quality. We consider it our primary responsibility to ensure that the pipeline not only brings life to his crop but also brings him prosperity," he added.

The company has been continuously engaged with concerned agencies to create solutions and is partnering initiatives to help efficient water transportation as well as conservation. "It is now taking this initiative to the next level by creating new products and technologies which will find applications not only in agricultural but also domestic and industrial usage," said Saurabh Dhanorkar, the company's managing director. Meanwhile, the re-strategizing of the company's policies has also been done in keeping with the new government's focus on water management, be it through the prime minister's 'Swach Bharat Abhiyan' or the inter-linking of rivers or the promise of toilets for all. "We are all geared up to get into a fresh trajectory and this will be helped by our huge network of about 15,000 distributors and dealers pan-India," Chhabria said.