In conversation with RealtyNInfra, Pranav Desai, Chief Innovation Officer at BirlaNu (part of CKA Birla Group), explains why AI must be embedded across the innovation journey—from materials discovery and testing to customer insight and commercialisation. He also discusses how sustainability is reshaping the way construction materials are designed, specified and evaluated and how BirlaNu is translating these trends into action.
Q1. Innovation is becoming a core business priority. What are the biggest shifts you are seeing in innovation today, and where do you see the industry still falling short?
The most significant shift is that innovation in building materials has moved from incremental product improvement to systems thinking: how materials interact with each other, with the structure, and with the environment across the full lifecycle. Customers, whether developers, contractors, or homeowners, are asking more sophisticated questions about durability, thermal performance, and long-term maintenance. That raises the bar for what innovation has to deliver.
Where the industry still falls short is translating laboratory breakthroughs into commercially viable, scalable products. The gap between a promising formulation and a product that a contractor can reliably specify and a distributor can stock is wider than most R&D timelines account for. Closing that gap requires tighter integration between materials science, manufacturing engineering, and market development.
Q2. AI is moving beyond automation. How do you see it changing the way companies identify opportunities, develop products and bring innovations to market?
AI is changing both the speed and search space of materials discovery. Traditional R&D approaches in building materials could take a decade to move a new formulation from concept to market. AI-driven materials informatics, using machine learning to predict material behaviour, screen candidates computationally, and accelerate experimental validation, is compressing that timeline significantly. What previously required hundreds of laboratory iterations can now be narrowed through computational prediction before physical testing begins.
At the market end, AI is giving product development teams earlier visibility into customer needs through warranty claims, performance data, and channel feedback. This allows innovation pipelines to be oriented toward real demand rather than assumptions. Companies that integrate AI across the innovation cycle, from discovery through commercialisation, will build a compounding advantage over those using it only in isolated functions.
Q3. Many ideas make it through R&D but struggle to reach commercial scale. What are the biggest barriers to closing this innovation-to-market gap?
Three barriers consistently emerge. The first is manufacturing readiness. A formulation that performs well at laboratory scale often behaves differently at industrial volumes and bridging that gap requires investment in process engineering that R&D pipelines do not always plan for adequately.
The second is channel and contractor acceptance. Construction is a conservative industry where new materials face adoption resistance, particularly when they require changes to installation practice. An innovative product that works differently from what a contractor has used for twenty years needs market development investment alongside product development investment. The two need to be resourced with the same urgency.
The third is regulatory and certification timelines. Green building standards, BIS certifications, and project specification approvals can add years to a product’s path to scale. Innovation that does not account for these timelines early will consistently underdeliver against its commercial potential.
Q4. Sustainability is increasingly influencing product development. How is this changing the way companies think about materials, product design and performance?
Sustainability has moved from the reporting function into the product specification stage, and the commercial signals driving that shift are now as significant as the regulatory ones. Developers are asking for embodied carbon data. Institutional buyers are factoring lifecycle costs into procurement decisions. Export markets are beginning to price the carbon content of imported materials. These are commercial signals, not just regulatory ones, and they are driving a fundamental rethink of how building materials are designed.
In practical terms, this means looking at industrial by-products such as fly ash, slag, and recycled aggregates as performance inputs. It means designing for durability, because a product that lasts longer and needs less maintenance carries a lower real-world environmental footprint than one with a lower upfront cost. The shift is from optimising for installation to optimising for the full life of the building.
Q5. As AI, material science and sustainability converge, what emerging technologies or approaches could shape the next generation of construction materials?
Three areas stand out. AI-accelerated materials discovery has the potential to significantly reduce the time required to identify and validate new formulations by enabling computational screening, prediction, and optimisation before physical synthesis. This has direct implications for building materials, where new cement formulations, polymer chemistries, and composite systems can increasingly be explored computationally before moving into physical testing.
Circular material design is the second. This means engineering construction products from the outset for recyclability, reuse, and resource efficiency, while also exploring industrial and post-consumer waste streams as potential raw-material inputs.
Thermally adaptive materials represent a third frontier, particularly relevant for India’s climate. Materials and surfaces that can respond dynamically to solar radiation and temperature could help reduce building energy demand and improve occupant comfort. The convergence of these approaches with advances in manufacturing technology will help shape the next generation of high-performance, lower-impact construction materials.
Q6. How is BirlaNu translating these trends into action?
At BirlaNu, innovation is embedded across our product development and manufacturing ecosystem, supported by our Innovation and R&D centres in India and Germany. Our focus is on combining material science, technology, and customer insight to develop differentiated, higher-value solutions.
We are already translating this into commercial products and technologies. Our FY26 innovation-led premiumisation included the rollout of OPVC pipes with organic based stabilizers, alongside next-generation formulations in Construction Chemicals. Our eR&D platform is accelerating formulation development and product testing cycles across Construction Chemicals and other segments. In roofing, our Ultra Cool products address the growing need for thermal performance and comfort in India’s increasingly demanding climate. Our AAC blocks incorporate fly ash, while innovations such as TruFiT leakproof pipe technology and advanced electrofusion solutions focus on improving durability, reliability, and installation performance.
We are also applying digital and AI capabilities across manufacturing, supply chain, and customer touchpoints to convert operational data into actionable intelligence and improve decision-making. The common thread is that innovation is not treated as a standalone R&D activity. It is integrated into how we develop products, improve processes, and respond to evolving customer needs.
