Asian Paints opens 200th ColourWorld showroom

Asian Paints' gro- wth in Sri Lanka reached a milestone last week when the company opened its 200th ColourWorld automated tinting and dispensing outlet in Colombo 3. The India headquartered multinational coatings giant which entered the market in 1999, has the largest network of tinting machines in Sri Lanka.

The landmark 200th ColourWorld showroom 'Lankasri Asian Paints' located at the Kollupitiya junction on the corner of Galle Road and Dharmapala Mawatha, is an all-new paint retail business.

The company's proprietor Periyaswamy Pillai Pushparaj who has extensive experience in FMCG and pharmacy business, said he was excited by the concept of selling paint from a machine and that he feels it is a strong business proposition.

"Our ColourWorld outlets have changed the way paint is sold in Sri Lanka," Asian Paints Lanka Director/General Manager Arvind Bindra said. "The concept of tinting and dispensing to customer requirements, coupled with proprietary features that are unique to the Asian Paints model, delivers benefits to end users as well as paints dealers."

He said that after Asian Paints started promoting the ColourWorld tinting system two years ago, other players also became active and have installed a large number of tinting machines at their dealers.

"This is transforming the market from factory-made shades to machine-tinted shades," Bindra said. Asian Paints' ColourWorld system enables buyers of paint to do experimental painting on buildings similar to their own on the system's computer before they decide on colour combinations.

Once the wall specifications are input, the sophisticated but user-friendly programme developed by Asian Paints calculates the quantities of paint required in each shade and the machine produces and dispenses the paint.

An upgrade introduced two years ago enables customers to paint the exteriors and interiors of their own homes by using digital camera photographs or scans of regular photographs of the areas they wish to paint, on the ColourWorld computers.

A unique feature of the Asian Paints ColourWorld dispenser is that it is the only automated paint dispensing system.