- **Ushanti Colour Chem is a specialist dye manufacturer that has spent three decades building a niche around a single colour - blue. Founded in 1993 by Shantilal Bhailal Gandhi in Gujarat’s chemical heartland, the company has grown from a proprietorship into a publicly listed enterprise whose board has approved initiating the migration process to the NSE’s main board, subject to shareholder and NSE approval. Its recurring approach is vertical integration: making its own intermediates to cut costs, then using that cost advantage to move from dyestuffs into inks and from one colour into many.** # Business segments A single-engine business - manufacturing dyes, pigments and intermediates - where almost everything is blue, most revenue comes from exports, and the next chapter depends on a new plant that can make the intermediates the company currently buys from others. ## 1. Blue dyestuffs and pigments: a niche manufacturer with an integration plan **The company makes almost exclusively blue dyes and pigments, sells them largely to traders for export markets, and is building a new plant to bring intermediate production in-house and expand into other colours.** - **Blue is the business** - roughly 95% of revenue came from blue dyestuffs in FY23, spanning products like Turquoise Blue, Copper Phthalocyanine (CPC) Blue crude, Alpha Blue, Pigment Green and Additive Blue. Other colours like black, orange and red are only made to specific order, not full-time, which limits the company’s ability to serve customers who want multi-colour supply from a single source. - **Exports through traders, not direct** - the company generates a major portion of its revenue from export operations, with trusted buyers in Asia and the Middle East placing repeat orders. The company sells to traders, who then sell on to textile manufacturers and other end-users, so it does not have its own offshore office to manage export relationships directly. - **One intermediate made in-house, the rest bought** - the company manufactures CPC Blue crude internally to reduce dependence on third parties, but procures most other dye intermediates from domestic suppliers like Kutch Chemicals, Bodal Chemicals and Kiri Industries. Raw materials accounted for about 58% of total expenses in FY23, and the fact that key intermediates are made by only a few producers creates price and supply risk. - **A new plant to change the structure** - the upcoming facility at Saykha, Bharuch, has permitted annual capacity of roughly 32,800 tonnes and planned production of about 16,140 tonnes across dye intermediates and dyestuffs. It sits roughly 15 kilometres from a port, which cuts logistics cost, and has received Gujarat Pollution Control Board consent to manufacture nine of the eleven planned intermediates. The plant will use material from the subsidiary UC Colours and Intermediates Private Limited as intermediates for synthesis, creating a chain from intermediate to dyestuff to ink. - **Customer and geographic concentration** - the top five customers provided a third of revenue and the top ten provided half in FY23, while Gujarat alone accounted for over 52% of total revenue as of March 2024. The company wants to broaden its footprint to the UK, USA and Canada, but has not yet established a presence there. # Group structure and partners **A family-run company with a subsidiary built for tax benefits and a new plant, where the promoters are both management and counterparties to related-party deals.** - **The subsidiary exists for policy and tax reasons** - UC Colours and Intermediates Private Limited was incorporated in 2019 and became a subsidiary later that year, specifically to house the new manufacturing project because a fresh company qualified for a lower income-tax rate, no MAT, and Gujarat’s net SGST reimbursement scheme that would not apply to intra-company transfers. It began commercial production at Saykha in August 2023. - **Promoters run the shop** - Joint Managing Directors Maunal Gandhi (sales, marketing, finance, foreign trade) and Minku Gandhi (manufacturing, production, environment) are the sons of founder Shantilal Gandhi, who remains Chairman at 96 with over six decades in chemicals. Arjun Gandhi, Maunal’s son, handles lab, R&D and production. - **Recent warrant issues reshaped the share base** - between February and March 2026, the company allotted and partially converted 26.50 lakh convertible warrants to non-promoter investors at Rs. 58 per warrant, raising paid-up capital to Rs. 13.89 crores across 1.39 crore shares. An earlier, larger warrant issue at Rs. 68 was withdrawn in May 2025, citing muted market sentiment and a sluggish chemical market.