The Aditya Birla Group is increasingly positioning itself as a platform and engine for new bets, using its scale, capital, brand and knowledge of adjacent businesses to enter categories where it sees the potential to disrupt established market structures, Chairman Kumar Mangalam Birla said on Thursday.
Speaking at the launch of the group’s latest venture, wires and cables business Ultravolt, Birla said successful new business creation had become a core part of the group’s DNA and an important source of competitive advantage. “I increasingly see the Aditya Birla Group as being a platform and engine for new bets. We make strategic bets, and back them with the intent of winning the category,” he said.
Birla on scaling businesses
Birla said the group looks for clear structural tailwinds supporting growth in a category, as well as the potential to disrupt the market by playing to its strengths. These include the Aditya Birla Group brand, its ability to deploy capital and scale from the outset, and its understanding of category ecosystems through adjacent businesses. “These strengths can take several forms and often reinforce each other,” he said, describing them as the group’s “hidden power levers”.
Ultravolt is the fourth new business the group has entered in three years. Birla cited the group’s recent forays into paints, jewellery retail and B2B e-commerce as examples of its approach. ABG’s paints brand Birla Opus has reached double-digit market share within two years of operations, while jewellery business Indriya has built 90 stores across 54 cities in two years, the chairman said. Birla Pivot, the group’s B2B e-commerce business, has reached an annualised revenue run rate of Rs 10,000 crore in three years.
Ultravolt’s Rs 1,800-crore bet
Ultravolt, housed under UltraTech Cement, is backed by an investment of Rs 1,800 crore and will be the second-largest player in the wires segment by capacity at launch. The group has set an ambition of becoming one of the top two players in the category within five years. Currently, leading players in the organised market include Polycab (30% market share), KEI Industries (17%), Finolex (10%) and RR Kabel (8% market share). ABG, however, did not disclose the annual capacity of its new venture. The Ultravolt facility in Bharuch, Gujarat, is equipped with German and Korean machinery, E-Beam Pro technology and a fully equipped R&D laboratory.
The business will be headed by Sriram Rangarajan as CEO.
Birla said the wires and cables opportunity was being driven by three mega trends—urbanisation, electrification and digitisation. Urbanisation is expected to add 100 million homes over the next decade, while grid modernisation, renewable energy, metro rail expansion and electric vehicles are expected to drive demand for specialised cables. The expansion of data centres is another major demand driver.
“Our core right to win is rooted in a deep understanding of the product and its underlying components,” he said.
The business plans to offer wires, cables and conduits, with a distribution network spanning more than 500 districts and 6,000 pin codes. Ultravolt will also leverage UltraTech Building Solutions’ network of 5,000 outlets, alongside the group’s established dealer relationships across building-material categories.