What led Asian Paints to invest on a supercomputer?

Do you know who purchased the first ever supercomputer in India? It wasn’t any government department like ISRO, BARC or the armed forces, research laboratory or even a tech company! It was India’s leading paints manufacturing company: Asian Paints!
What led Asian Paints to invest $10.6 Million in 1970 on a supercomputer and how did the supercomputer bolster Asian Paints historic growth story? Hint: It has everything to do with what we have been championing.
For the last five decades Asian Paints has been miles ahead of their competition in terms of all important metrics – Revenues, Profit, ROCE, Assets, etc. Since its IPO in 1982, the stock has grown 1800X! It still continues to be a value investor’s favourite.
It’s thus definitely a story worth knowing. Check out our story Champaklal, Asian Paints and a Supercomputer – 10X profits and 18% annual growth over 50 yrs!!!
Let’s port you back to 2022. Global ecommerce is all set for yet another transition. This time round, it’s governments stepping in to level the playing field. Consider ONDC being pioneered by the Government of India. ONDC (Open Network for Digital Commerce), aims to democratise ecommerce for small retailers who are not well versed with ecommerce and related platforms. It will connect buyers and sellers on consumer-focused platforms across diverse sectors.
The list of companies who have joined ONDC includes big names like PayTM & Phonepe. Some leading banks of India (like HDFC bank & Kotak) and FMCG companies like Marico are joining in too. So we can expect quite a bit of traction pretty soon. There are also hackathons happening to build apps for the ONDC.
If ONDC is successful, we can expect other governments to follow suit.
What’s remarkable is that the idea of ONDC is very similar to the original idea of Eunimart – To provide a single platform to sellers which connects to all the marketplaces and other supply chain partners. For a startup like Eunimart it was indeed a tall ask … we are excited to see if ONDC gives a shape to our original dream!
Today, Eunimart is helping larger companies build/manage their own suite for selling omnichannel and going global. Our latest release uses AI to solve some of the toughest ecommerce selling challenges.
Want to get a sneak peek? Here is my calendar for your convenience. I will be happy to demo it to you.
2022 has been a stellar year for us so far. Some of our top achievements have been:
- The launch of the new platform obviously takes the cake. This has been a phenomenal journey, from concept to realisation of a full fledged working platform built in a very composable and open architecture to scale and manage the requirements from small businesses to multinational companies.
- Our US launch has seen some success with some fairly large partnerships under process and some smaller partnerships being closed.
- We have kickstarted a referral sales and a channel partnerships program. Some of the solutions in Eunimart’s Enterprise Product Suite in addition to targeting large DTC brands and house of brands are:
1. Mall in Your Pocket: Targeting Mid and Large sized Malls looking to adopt eCommerce and create eMalls.
2. Marketplace Tech 2.0: House of brands, existing mid-size Marketplaces, or Retailers and Supermarkets looking to create, or upgrade, their ecommerce marketplaces.
3. Fulfilment / 3PL Tech: Mid-size Logistics (last mile) and warehousing providers who are looking for automation solutions.
Old Chinese proverb: May you live in interesting times!
Best RegardsShayak