Birla Carbon Adjacent Products: From Open Brief to CEO Investment Decision
Built a framework to evaluate five adjacent product categories, identified simulation services as the priority, and delivered a business case that led to a capital commitment
Gaurav Harlalka
Strategy & M&A at Aditya Birla Group Leadership Programs
From their time as
Strategy & M&A
Aditya Birla Group Leadership Programs • 2025
Overview
Gaurav was given an open brief at Birla Carbon: identify adjacent products the company could enter. There were no further instructions.
The Story
Gaurav was given an open brief at Birla Carbon: identify adjacent products the company could enter. There were no further instructions.
He started by mapping what Birla Carbon's primary customers, tire companies, needed beyond carbon black. He identified a set of candidate products including sulfur, lignin, and simulation services. To evaluate them, he built a scoring framework across four dimensions: market size, market growth rate, synergy with Birla Carbon's manufacturing and technical capabilities, and synergy with its existing customer base.
Narrowing the Field
He ran secondary research and some primary conversations with players in lignin sulfate and simulation to score each candidate. Simulation services emerged as the strongest fit. Mid-tier tire companies, he found, lacked the in-house capability to build simulation models but needed them. Birla Carbon already had testing machines that were underutilized. Entering simulation would both address a customer gap and improve internal asset utilization.
Gaurav went deeper. He visited the ABG research plant and met the R&D head to understand what simulation capabilities already existed and what stage the internal development was at. He mapped the competitive landscape, identified where the gaps were, and segmented the market to confirm that mid-tier tire companies were the right initial target.
The Business Case
He then built a full business case: the additional investment required was approximately $200,000 per year. A 5% improvement in internal efficiency alone would generate roughly $1 million per year in value. External simulation services to mid-tier tire companies could generate four to five million dollars in additional revenue over three to four years.
The CEO approved the investment. The research directly shaped a capital allocation decision.