Meet Dhingra brothers, shopkeepers who bought Vijay Mallya company and turned it into Rs 56,000 crore business

Kuldip Singh Dhingra and Gurbachan Singh Dhingra are two brothers who control India’s largest paint company, the leading brand Berger Paints. Buying the country’s smallest paint maker from beverage tycoon Vijay Mallya’s UB Group in the 90s, they have turned it into the second largest in its segment with a market cap of over Rs 56,000 crore.

With their successful multi-million dollar business, the two siblings have a net worth of around Rs 25,000 crore each ($3.1 billion) in 2023. Kuldip serves as the chairman of Berger Paints while Gurbachan is the vice chairman.

Born in the first few years of the Independence of India, Kuldip and Gurbachan belonged to a business family into the paints business since his grandfather started his shop in 1898 in Punjab’s Amritsar.

Both did their graduations from the Delhi University. Both started out as shopkeepers in Amritsar. By the 1970s, they had an annual turnover of Rs 10 lakh. As business grew, they became the largest paint exporter to the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

Patriarch Kuldip then set his sights on becoming the owner of an MNC from a shopkeeper. His target was acquiring Berger Paints, then a company belonging to the UB Group of Vijay Mallya. He was able to set up a meeting with the beverage baron through a childhood friend who was Mallya’s acquaintance.

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oday, Berger Paints has business interests in not just India but in several countries including Russia, Poland, Nepal and Bangladesh. The Dhingras are one of the richest families in India.