Economy & Market

Our philosophy is to leverage both ?Brand Power? and ?Bazar Power?

Published

11 years ago

March 31, 2015

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Vishal Sood, Senior Vice President – Sales and Marketing, Orient Cement.
While buying a product, the trust level a brand enjoys, plays a major role. The brand differentiation created by us by ensuring consistent product quality and proper communication has built the trust level. This has further led to consistent positive user experience. In addition, our ?trade partners? (dealers) advocate the brand Birla.A1 to their customers. This combination of ?Brand Power? and ?Bazar Power? has helped us to create a strong bond with our customers and finally led to the capacity utilisation of over 80 per cent, which is far better than industry average (especially in south), says Vishal Sood, Senior Vice President – Sales and Marketing, Orient Cement. Excerpts from the interview…

What is the basic message you try to project through your commercials?
Basically, our idea is to create trust among consumers that quality of our product is so good and so consistent that he can rely on it for any critical application, be it foundation, load bearing structures or roof. The idea is to create a bond or connect with the customer, rationally as well as emotionally. Our creatives communicate both rational and emotional message – that brand ?Birla.A1? provides the ?mazbooti? that finally leads to ?bharosa,?, the trust. And I am proud to say, it has created its impact in the market.

What is the thought process behind the preparation of your media plan?
Our media plan depends on three factors; stakeholder (consumers/influencers/channel partners), market and lastly marketing task (whether it is awareness, brand salience or loyalty).

Cement, being more of a commodity, how do you differentiate it through commercials?
I do not agree with this perception that cement is a commodity. There are a couple of cement brands including Birla.A1 that enjoy good equity among their stakeholders. The brand differentiation is being created by us through the ?Trishul? strategy, first, by ensuring the consistent product quality. This helps the consistency in positive user experience. Second, communicating the quality through various medium of advertising and finally, having a ?connect? with stakeholders (for eg, consumers, masons, engineers, contractors) through one-to-one and one-to-many interactions.

How do you reach consumers at different levels?
A consumer associates oneself with a brand to a trust level, which is very important when it comes to buying a product. We create brand salience in different levels; basically effective communication modes for above the line (ATL) and below the line (BTL). The strategy normally differs as per the segments of clients. The positive feedback what I got from hundreds of masons and engineers is an indication of how successful we have been in creating and sustaining the trust level. And this comes because of the superior and consistent product quality with effective services from our side.

Our visibility is through effective leveraging of outdoor and print media as well as point of sale. Besides, we have team of technical engineers, who are equipped with specially designed mobile vans called as ?Concrete Engineer? which is equipped with modern equipment for on site testing. Our mobile van connects with stakeholders through one-to-one and one-to-many meets.

What are the challenges involved in brand building?
The challenge is to build the brand in new markets and sustain it on the existing markets in a category which is low involvement and is cluttered with many suppliers in each market. We have identified and planned to run various programs to communicate as to how our product is different from the competition. We regularly come out with innovative programs for different segments of stakeholders, to communicate the USP of our product.

Other than price and quality, which factors influence buying decision?
We believe that quality of cement is the topmost factor influencing the buying decision; pricing comes much later. Other factors such as service levels of the organization, quality of packaging and company image in the market etc, also are very important.

How successful have you been in enticing consumers to shell out extra for your product?
In my view, consumer appreciates quality and value additions and is willing to pay a premium. We are able to effectively communicate the value proposition and deliver quality consistently, followed by proper services.

We also listen to voice of our customers/consumers on ongoing basis and make necessary improvements. For example, we have improved the quality of our packaging in last two years based on the inputs received from our stakeholders

Tell us about your distribution strategies.
Distribution strategy should achieve two objectives – one, the product should have adequate reach so that consumer gets it easily. Second, the brand must be present in the outlets that matter. It?s very important for us that we are available when consumer wants us, and available at the right outlets. On the one hand, dependence on only a few large dealers may not enhance reach of the product to sufficient number of outlets and on the other hand, having very large net work of dealers may not be sustainable due to huge transportation costs involved. Hence in my view it must be optimization of the two parameters.

Quality perception of cement varies from customer to customer. Does it have an impact on your marketing strategies?
That?s true. However,while quality perception may vary from customer to customer there are also groups of customers who have similar behaviour/buying patterns. So we chose to target segments of customer who have similar attitudes and beliefs and behaviour pattern. As mentioned earlier, we have different set of communication channel tailor-made to suite various client segment.

Is there any expansion plans on the anvil? And also tell us the marketing strategies?
The company?s vision is to become a relevant national player. We have set ambitious plans to increase capacity from the current 5 MTPA to 15 MTPA by 2020. We shall achieve one of the milestones in the current financial year when our new greenfield plant with a capacity of 3 MTPA at Gulbarga will be operational shortly. This will help us open up new market and further consolidate our presence. So we will continue doing what we have been doing for our existing business and the strategy will be to raise awareness in new markets.

Is there anything else you would like to share with us?
I have just begun this journey into the cement sector and I am still learning. All I can say is that our intent is to build one of the best marketing companies in next three years. We are looking forward to have the best possible talents for our expansion plan.

Economy & Market

TSR Will Define Which Cement Companies Win India’s Net-Zero Race

Published

4 days ago

April 27, 2026

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Jignesh Kundaria, Director and CEO, Fornnax Technology

India is simultaneously grappling with two crises: a mounting waste emergency and an urgent need to decarbonise its most carbon-intensive industries. The cement sector, the second-largest in the world and the backbone of the nation’s infrastructure ambitions, sits at the centre of both. It consumes enormous quantities of fossil fuel, and it has the technical capacity to consume something else entirely: the waste our cities cannot get rid of.

According to CPCB and NITI Aayog projections, India generates approximately 62.4 million tonnes of municipal solid waste annually, with that figure expected to reach 165 million tonnes by 2030. Much of this waste is energy-rich and non-recyclable. At the same time, cement kilns operate at material temperatures of approximately 1,450 degrees Celsius, with gas temperatures reaching 2,000 degrees. This high-temperature environment is ideal for co-processing, ensuring the complete thermal destruction of organic compounds without generating toxic residues. The physics are in our favour. The infrastructure is not.

Pre-processing is not the support act for co-processing. It is the main event. Get the particle size wrong, get the moisture wrong, get the calorific value wrong and your kiln thermal stability will suffer the consequences.

The Regulatory Push Is Real

The Solid Waste Management (SWM) Rules 2026 mandate that cement plants progressively replace solid fossil fuels with Refuse-Derived Fuel (RDF), starting at a 5 per cent baseline and scaling to 15 per cent within six years. NITI Aayog’s 2026 Roadmap for Cement Sector Decarbonisation targets 20 to 25 per cent Thermal Substitution Rate (TSR) by 2030. Beyond compliance, every tonne of coal replaced by RDF generates measurable carbon reductions which is monetisable under India’s emerging Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS). TSR is no longer a sustainability metric. It is a financial lever.

Yet our own field assessments across multiple Indian cement plants reveal a sobering reality: the primary barrier to scaling AFR adoption is not waste availability. It is the fragmented and under-engineered pre-processing ecosystem that sits between the waste and the kiln.

Why Indian Waste Is a Different Engineering Problem

Indian municipal solid waste is not the material that imported shredding equipment was designed for. Our waste streams frequently exceed 40 per cent to 50 per cent moisture content, particularly during monsoon cycles, saturated with abrasive inerts including sand, glass, and stone. Plants relying on imported OEM equipment face months of downtime awaiting proprietary spare parts. Machines built for segregated, low-moisture waste fail quickly and disrupt the entire pre-processing operation in Indian conditions.

The two most common failures we observe are what I call the biting teeth problem and the chewing teeth problem. Plants relying solely on a primary shredder reduce bulk waste to large fractions, but the output remains too coarse for stable kiln combustion. Others attempt to use a secondary shredder as a standalone unit without a primary stage to pre-size the feed, leading to catastrophic mechanical failure. When both stages are present but mismatched in throughput capacity, the system becomes a bottleneck. Achieving the 40 to 70 tonnes per hour required for meaningful coal displacement demands a precisely coordinated two-stage process.

Engineering a Made-in-India Answer

At Fornnax, our response to these challenges is grounded in one principle: Indian waste demands Indian engineering. Our systems are built around feedstock homogeneity, the holy grail of kiln stability. Consistent particle size and predictable calorific value are the foundation of stable kiln combustion. Without them, no TSR target is achievable at scale.

Our SR-MAX2500 Dual Shaft Primary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive) processes raw, baled, or loosely mixed MSW, C&I waste, bulky waste, and plastics, reducing them to approximately 150 mm fractions at throughputs of up to 40 tonnes per hour. The R-MAX 3300 Single Shaft Secondary Shredder (Hydraulic Drive), introduced in 2025, takes that primary output and produces RDF fractions in the 30 to 80 mm range at up to 30 tonnes per hour, specifically optimised for consistent kiln feeding. We have also introduced electric drive configurations under the SR-100 HD series, with capacities between 5 and 40 tonnes per hour, already operational at a leading Indian waste-processing facility.

Looking ahead, Fornnax is expanding its portfolio with the upcoming SR-MAX3600 Hydraulic Drive primary shredder at up to 70 tonnes per hour and the R-MAX2100 Hydraulic drive secondary shredder at up to 20 tonnes per hour, designed specifically for the large-scale throughput that higher TSR ambitions require.

The Investment Case Is Now

The 2070 Net-Zero target is not a distant goal for India’s cement sector. It starts today, with decisions being made on the plant floor.

The SWM Rules 2026 are already in effect, requiring cement plants to replace coal with RDF. Carbon credit markets are opening up, and coal prices are not going to get cheaper. Every tonne of coal a cement plant replaces with waste-derived fuel saves money on one side and generates carbon credit revenue on the other. Pre-processing infrastructure is no longer just a compliance requirement. It is a business investment with a measurable return.

The good news is that nothing is missing. The technology works. The waste is available in every Indian city. The government has provided the policy direction. The only thing standing between where the industry is today and where it needs to be is the commitment to build the right infrastructure.

The cement companies that move now will not just meet the regulations. They will be ahead of every competitor that waits.

About The Author

Jignesh Kundaria is the Director and CEO of Fornnax Technology. Over an experience spanning more than two decades in the recycling industry, he has established himself as one of India’s foremost voices on waste-to-fuel technology and alternative fuel infrastructure.

Concrete

WCA Welcomes SiloConnect as associate corporate member

Published

3 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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The World Cement Association (WCA) has announced SiloConnect as its newest associate corporate member, expanding its network of technology providers supporting digitalisation in the cement industry. SiloConnect offers smart sensor technology that provides real-time visibility of cement inventory levels at customer silos, enabling producers to monitor stock remotely and plan deliveries more efficiently. The solution helps companies move from reactive to proactive logistics, improving delivery planning, operational efficiency and safety by reducing manual inspections. The technology is already used by major cement producers such as Holcim, Cemex and Heidelberg Materials and is deployed across more than 30 countries worldwide.

Concrete

TotalEnergies and Holcim Launch Floating Solar Plant in Belgium

Published

3 weeks ago

April 13, 2026

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TotalEnergies and Holcim have commissioned a floating solar power plant in Obourg, Belgium, built on a rehabilitated former chalk quarry that has been converted into a lake. The project has a generation capacity of 31 MW and produces around 30 GWh of renewable electricity annually, which will be used to power Holcim’s nearby industrial operations. The project is currently the largest floating solar installation in Europe dedicated entirely to industrial self-consumption. To ensure minimal impact on the surrounding landscape, more than 700 metres of horizontal directional drilling were used to connect the solar installation to the electrical substation. The project reflects ongoing collaboration between the two companies to support industrial decarbonisation through renewable energy solutions and innovative infrastructure development.