The Shapoorji Pallonji group, best known as the single largest shareholder in Tata Sons, seems to be taking a leaf out of the diversified Tata group. The $4-5 billion group is planning to introduce a unified corporate brand.

Cato Partners, an Australian identity management and design firm, will help to design the group’s brand architecture.

“We are looking into the issue of having a unified corporate brand identity. Most of our businesses are B2B in nature. Hence, so far we have not focused on a unified brand identity,” a member of the Mistry family, the promoters of the group, told Financial Chronicle.

The Shapoorji Pallonji group has interests in construction, engineering, textiles, water purification and upmarket retailing.

Cato’s clients include Saudi Aramco Total Refining and Petrochemical Company, Dubai Airports, Great Southern Rail Australia and Insurance Australia group.

Apart from the parent Shapoorji Pallonji & Co, whose landmark constructions include NCPA Apartments at Nariman Point in Mumbai and the Sultan of Oman’s palace, the other group companies are relatively lesser known. This affects the smaller group constituents’ ability to attract top-tier talent and financing at a rate that reflects the group’s strength.

The group, observers point out, is best known for being the largest single shareholder in Tata Sons with 18.4 per cent.

“We are making good progress on the branding initiative and hope to complete it by the end of this year. In addition to design shops, we are also working with our advertising agency to find out perceptions of what the group stands for internally and externally to ensure we get this right,” said another top official of Shapoorji Pallonji group who is familiar with the development.

What may be spurring Mistrys too, said experts, is the renewed focus the group has placed on consumer related businesses such as real estate and water purification.

Pallonji Mistry, the 80-year-old patriarch of the group, who according to Forbes magazine has a net worth of $5.8 billion, controls the group. His sons Shapoor and Cyrus oversee the group’s diversified business interests.

According to Morgen Witzel, a business historian and honorary senior fellow at the University of Exeter Business School, who wrote Tata: The Evolution of a Corporate Brand, “A corporate brand provides air cover; it supports and sustains the individual brands. In such a situation individual brands and corporate brands reinforce one another. A corporate brand also acts as a seeding benefit bringing about cohesion and unity in the group. Particularly when one is in diverse businesses then it lends a feeling of being in the same family by making cultural and emotional connect important.”