Somany Brand Guidelines: The Kassar Tile Maker Born of a Pilkington Tie-Up

A British partner and a tile works in Haryana.

Somany Ceramics began as a joint effort with a British tile maker. The company says H. L. Somany (Hiralall Somany) formed Somany Pilkington Ltd in technical collaboration with Pilkington of the United Kingdom, and that production started at Kassar, in Haryana, in 1971, with a capacity of about half a million square metres a year. English Wikipedia, citing the ratings agency CRISIL, gives 1968 as the year the company was incorporated, and the company’s own website also lists 1968 as its founding date while describing 1971 as the start of the business.

The second plant followed in Gujarat. The company says a unit at Kadi was commissioned in 1983, taking total capacity to 2.65 million square metres; English Wikipedia gives 1981 for the Kadi plant. In 1992, the company says, it installed larger hydraulic presses and roller kilns at Kassar and began making ceramic floor tiles, and its distribution spread across India. English Wikipedia says the company was listed on the Bombay Stock Exchange in 1995.

The British link ended in the 1990s. According to the company’s timeline, the Somany family bought the holding stake from Pilkington in 1994 and renamed the business SPL Ltd; it took its present name, Somany Ceramics Ltd, in 2007. The family still leads it: the company names Shreekant Somany as chairman and managing director and Abhishek Somany as chief executive and managing director, and The Hindu BusinessLine interviewed Abhishek Somany in that role in June 2023. The company marked its 50th anniversary in 2021, its website says, and its head office is in Noida, in Uttar Pradesh.

Tiles, bathware and building products.

Somany describes its range as tiles, sanitaryware, bath fittings and allied décor products. Tiles remain the centre. The company says it began producing Duragres glazed vitrified tiles in Haryana in 2010 and launched Coverstone large slabs in 2023; it also says it received a patent in 2009 for a glaze composition that it sells as VC Shield. In June 2023 The Hindu BusinessLine reported that Somany planned to add about a quarter to the capacity of its 11 plants in north, south and west India, with a large-slab plant at Morbi, in Gujarat. The paper said net capacity of around 11 million square metres had been added by then across projects under way.

The company has widened its offer step by step. Its timeline records the start of in-house production of EzyFix tile adhesive in Haryana and a bath-fittings unit in Punjab in 2018, a joint venture for its first tile plant in south India in 2019, and a larger automated adhesive plant in 2020. English Wikipedia says Somany entered the water-heater market in 2020 and, in February 2023, agreed with Nepal’s Murarka Group to set up a tile plant in Nepal. The company says it acquired Durabuild in 2025, moving into building solutions.

Scale figures come from different dates. English Wikipedia, citing Construction Week India in July 2024, gives an annual manufacturing capacity of 75 million square metres and exports to more than 80 countries; the company’s website now refers to partners in 82 countries. The company also says it was named a Superbrand for VC Shield tiles in 2023 and for bathware in 2025.

How tile makers show their work.

Ceramic tile makers sell surfaces that people mostly meet as rooms, so their own material leans heavily on finished spaces. Pamesa’s website, for example, offers downloadable catalogues, moodboards, “by effect” and “by space” product searches and a BIM library for architects, and Porcelanosa’s 2026 showrooms in Vila-real presented its large-format porcelain through furnished settings, Interempresas reported. Room-set photography, in which a collection is laid across a kitchen, a bathroom or a terrace, is a common way to show a range.

Naming follows the surface. Pamesa’s 2026 ranges carry names such as Heritage, Trevi and Taj Mahal, and makers sort them by finish, format and thickness. Trade reports in 2026 described Porcelanosa adding 160 cm by 160 cm floor pieces and 3 mm slabs for furniture cladding, and Pamesa grouping its new ranges into four families, each defined by the kind of material effect it shows.

Trade fairs are the other main stage. Cersaie, held at BolognaFiere in Italy, reached its 43rd edition from 21 to 25 September 2026, according to Castellón Información. Both companies built their 2026 stands as furnished settings: Pamesa called its 2026 space The Gallery, and Porcelanosa printed a magazine to guide visitors around its stand. Pamesa’s website also keeps virtual tours of its stands at Cersaie and at Cevisama from 2017 to 2022, while Porcelanosa stages its own annual show in Vila-real, which reached its 32nd edition in 2026.

Behind the collections sit corporate pages that read quite differently. They list group companies, plants, acquisitions and leadership teams, and they are often the clearest public record of who owns which brand. This guide relies on those pages only for what the companies say about themselves, and on press reports and encyclopedias for dated facts.

A name in capitals and a film star.

In its own marketing the company writes its name in capitals, as SOMANY, and that is how trade press such as afaqs! report its campaigns. afaqs! reported in October 2022 on its campaign “Zameen Se Judey”, run across television, outdoor and digital media, and said the company was expanding across India with what it called a 360-degree strategy for reaching the public.

The website is built around showing rooms rather than specifications. Its menus offer tiles sorted by application, by space and by look, alongside lookbooks, catalogues, a room visualiser, a style quiz and customer videos, and it has separate sections for bathware and building solutions. The company frames its story around its founder’s belief that beautiful spaces deserve carefully made materials, and around a promise “to create spaces that feel like home.”

Research is part of how the company presents itself. Its timeline says its research and development department was recognised by the Government of India in 1996, the year it also set up double fast-firing units in Haryana and Gujarat. English Wikipedia says it received ISO 9002 certification in 1998 and ISO 14001 certification in 1999. The company’s website lists patents and patent filings over the years since, and it names its glaze and surface technologies as product lines in their own right, such as VC Shield.

For a design guide, Somany shows how a long-running family tile maker uses room imagery, a capitalised wordmark and national advertising to reach buyers across India. Compare Kajaria, another Indian tile maker with plants in several states, and Roca, the Spanish bathroom company. For this guide we use a deep teal, sand and sandstone with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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