In an interview with IANS, Amit Syngle, MD and CEO, Asian Paints said that one strong trend that is taking shape is that people don’t really punish good brands. “In fact, during uncertain times, people get back into the solace of brands that are trusted and care for you”. Talking about the relevance of big brands in a pandemic phase, Syngle said that the tendency would be to go towards the bigger brand which has always been taking care of you and batting with you in this environment. “So to that extent, I think bigger brands would have leverage in terms of investing in the market because you don’t bat for the short term,” he said.

“As far as overall business goes, yes overall business would take a little bit of a toll because April has not been a very good month and for most of the period, the entire country was in lockdown. This has been common for all brands across the country”, he added. “However, what we’ve seen is that since lockdown 3.0, from the last week of April, we have seen a really good demand in tier 3 and tier 4 cities which have been largely unaffected by the pandemic,” he said. Asian Paints has been consolidating our presence in the health and hygiene sector because we believe this category is here to stay. “This category is also going to grow very strongly and we have a line-up of more products which we are going to launch,” he added.