Mumbai, June 28 -- India's paintmakers must gird up for a tougher battle from two upstarts.

Birla Opus, owned by billionaire Kumar Mangalam Birla, has already shaken up the nation's paints sector with its pricing war. Now, JSW Paints Ltd's Rs.9,300-crore acquisition of Dutch giant AkzoNobel's India unit portends a tighter squeeze on the profitability of their peers as they battle to protect turf.

The deal by JSW Paints, part of billionaire Sajjan Jindal's steel-to-cement empire, will not immediately change the competitive landscape as it merely changes ownership from a multinational to a local player, according to Abneesh Roy, executive director for research at Nuvama Institutional Equities. "But this is positive for JSW Paints. Over th...