Paint industry stalwarts H. M. Bharuka and Jagdish Acharya were conferred Lifetime Achievement Award by Kargil war hero, Lt. General Mohinder Puri at the 30th and 31st Indian Paint Conference held in Goa.  Baruka and Acharya truly deserved the Awards for their immense contribution to the Indian paint industry.

Bharuka is considered a maverick and visionary in the Indian Paint Industry and under his watch, he transformed Kansai Nerolac Paints into being a force to reckon with. He is highly regarded in the vendor community for his constant encouragement to invest in new technologies, focus on Make in India, and upgrade skills and competencies to support the growth of the industry. He championed ESG initiatives when it was not a buzzword and worked tirelessly to create a strong corporate governance culture which benefited the industry.     

Acharya spent over three and a half decades with Asian Paints in different positions across domestic, international, and joint venture divisions. Under his leadership, the Paints & Coatings Skill Council has undertaken various initiatives to identify and upgrade skills needed in the manufacturing and applications of the Paints and Coatings industry with special emphasis upon training in tribal areas and women painters. He is involved with various academic institutes to propagate the importance of Paints & Coatings as a subject of interest and make jobs in the industry aspirational.        

Awards were also given in the Technical Paper Category at the 30th and 31st Indian Paint Conference 2023 held in Taj Resort & Convention Centre (TRCC) and Cidade de Goa (CDG).

Technical Paper Award Winners

Research Paper Awards

1. Tirthankar Jana and Tapan Kumar Dhar - Berger Paints India - Development of a Novel Hybrid Emulsion Polymer for High Performance Water Based Coatings

2. Allaudin Shaikh and Subarna Shyamroy - Asian Paints - Rapid Ambient Curable Non-Isocyanate Poly- Hydroxyalkyl Urethanes

(HNIPUs) moieties Crosslinkable with Aldehyde Moieties

3. Tapan Kumar Dhar, Debabrata Pal, Somnath Ray, and Sandip Bera - Berger Paints India - Studies on Impact of PANI-Phosphate, Graphene and CNT Grafted Bio Polyol Based Solvent Free Polyurethane system on Cathodic Delamination Resistance

Review Paper Awards

1. Snehasis Chakraborty and Moloy Banerjee - Berger Paints India - Technology Frontier of Waterborne Anticorrosive Coatings

2. Abhay Padhye - ICA Pidilite - Conformal coatings

3. Surya Ghosh and Randhir Parmar - Asian Paints - Modern Paints and Coatings Technologies - Redefining Air Quality

Institutional Paper Awards

Kanishka Vispute and Dr. Aarti More - ICT Mumbai - Coating on Plastic Substrates: A review

The Technical Paper Awards category had three sub categories - Research Paper Awards, Review Paper Awards, and Institutional Paper Awards.  Research Paper Awards and Review Paper Awards were only for industry whereas Institutional Paper Awards were only for academic institutes.