In an exclusive interaction with Thiruamuthan, Assistant Editor at Industry Outlook, Sony Thayil, Chief Business Officer, Reliance Industries Ltd, a seasoned business leader with over 23 years of experience across Reliance Industries, Asahi India Glass, Jaquar Group, and Hindware, and an alumnus of Harvard Business School and IIM Calcutta, shares his perspective on the evolving building materials landscape, backed by deep expertise in P&L leadership, business transformation, and sustainable manufacturing ecosystems.
Sony Thayil highlights that India’s rapid construction growth is increasingly at odds with declining forest cover, making the transition away from traditional wood both a commercial and environmental necessity. He underscores how next-generation downstream materials, particularly PVC-based solutions, are emerging as high-performance alternatives, driven by durability, cost-efficiency, and scalability, while emphasizing the critical role of architect-led specification in accelerating industry-wide adoption.
There is a number that has stayed with me for years. India loses approximately 1.5 million hectares of forest cover every decade — and a significant part of that loss is driven by demand for timber, plywood, and wood-based panels for construction and interiors.
At the same time, India is building at a pace the world has rarely seen: millions of new urban homes every year, millions of square feet of commercial office space, and thousands of hotels, hospitals, retail stores, and public infrastructure projects.
Both of these facts cannot remain true indefinitely. Something has to give.
I have spent over two decades in the building materials industry — working with architects, interior designers, builders, and developers across India, SAARC, and the Middle East. I have seen the inside of procurement decisions worth hundreds of crores. And I can say with some confidence: the shift away from wood in Indian interiors is no longer just an environmental aspiration.
It is becoming a commercial and practical reality. The question is whether the industry will lead this shift, or simply react to it when it becomes unavoidable.
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Ask any interior designer about wood and they will give you a familiar list of virtues: warmth, texture, naturalness, timelessness. These are real. But ask the same designer about their last project's snag list and you will hear an equally familiar set of complaints — warping in Mumbai's monsoon humidity, termite damage in older structures, swelling around kitchen and bathroom fittings, inconsistent grain quality from batch to batch, and, increasingly, the sheer cost of premium timber.
The Bill of Materials for a mid-range residential interior project today looks very different from what it did a decade ago. Solid wood furniture that was aspirational ten years ago is now a luxury that fewer projects can accommodate. Plywood, the workhorse of Indian interiors, has seen consistent price escalation driven by raw material scarcity and import volatility. MDF and particleboard, while cost-effective, carry their own limitations in humid environments.
None of this is new information to anyone in the trade. What is new — and what the industry has been slow to communicate — is that genuine, high-performance alternatives now exist. And they are not compromises.
Not long ago, I stood inside Kempegowda International Airport's Terminal 2 in Bengaluru — one of the most thoughtfully designed public spaces built in India in recent years. The terminal is breathtaking: vast, airy, and layered with a lush biophilic aesthetic that wraps travelers in a sense of calm the moment they enter. Surfaces that appear to be warm, richly textured timber line the ceilings, columns, and wall panels across thousands of square meters of space.
What struck me was not the beauty of the terminal — though it is genuinely beautiful. What struck me was the knowledge of what those surfaces were not. A space of that scale, finished with real timber, would have demanded an enormous volume of wood — tonnes of it — with all the associated sourcing, moisture management, fire treatment, and long-term maintenance challenges that come with natural timber in a high-traffic public environment.
Instead, the designers had specified advanced downstream materials — next-generation surface products that deliver the visual warmth and texture of timber with none of its structural vulnerabilities. The result is a space that is aesthetically richer than most airports in the world, functionally superior to what timber could have delivered at that scale, and responsible in a way that a building of its stature and visibility deserves. Tons of wood were saved. You would never know.
That, to me, is the most powerful argument for sustainable downstream materials: not the environmental case alone, but the proof that you do not have to sacrifice beauty to make the right choice.
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Over the past several years, I have been closely involved in bringing next-generation downstream PVC-based products — boards, panels, sheets, and profiles — into specification conversations with architects, interior designers, contractors, and builders across India. The reception, initially cautious, has shifted considerably.
These are not the PVC products of a decade ago. Modern downstream PVC materials offer natural wood aesthetics in texture, grain, and finish that are visually indistinguishable from timber in most application contexts. More importantly, they solve the structural problems that wood cannot: fully moisture-resistant, termite-proof, dimensionally stable across India's extreme climate range, and consistently manufactured to tight tolerances.
For applications in kitchens, bathrooms, wet areas, façades, and ceilings — anywhere that wood struggles — they perform better in every measurable way. In premium hospitality projects, where durability under heavy use is non-negotiable, I have seen these materials specified for wall cladding, ceiling systems, and furniture substrates. In affordable housing, where cost per square foot is everything and moisture is a constant adversary, the economics are equally compelling. The material has found its footing across price points — the mark of a genuinely disruptive product.
If you want to understand how building materials markets actually change, look at the specification process — not the retail shelf. In India, the architect and interior designer community numbers over 700,000 registered professionals, and they collectively influence material choices in projects worth several lakh crore rupees annually. A single senior architect specifying a material across their portfolio can shift purchase volumes that no amount of retail advertising can match.
This is why the transition to sustainable downstream materials will not happen through consumer campaigns or government mandates alone. It will happen through specification. And specification is won through education, demonstration, and trusted relationships — not price lists.
The most effective way to shift an architect's specification is to put the material in their hands — literally. Experience centers, application mock-ups, project references, and site visits do more work than any catalog. An architect who has touched, tested, and visited a completed project using a new material is a converted advocate. That advocacy then propagates through their network, their junior staff, and their clients in ways that are impossible to replicate through any other marketing vehicle.
The opportunity in front of India's sustainable materials sector is significant — but it will not be captured passively. Three things need to happen:
India does not have to choose between beautiful, well-designed spaces and a forest cover worth preserving. Terminal 2 at Bengaluru airport is proof of that. The materials to do both already exist.
What we need now is the industry will to put them in front of the people who can specify them — and the channel infrastructure to deliver them wherever India builds next. The transition has already begun. The only question is how fast we move.
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