Asian Paints marks 40 Years of Sharad Shamman with landmark Yellow Taxi Project in Kolkata
Kolkata: Asian Paints Sharad Shamman, Kolkata’s most iconic celebration of Durga Pujo creativity, completes 40 years in 2025 with a landmark project called “Cholte Cholte 40” that transforms Kolkata’s yellow taxis into moving time capsules.
With richly painted exteriors and interiors crafted as immersive environments using wallpapers, fabrics, and textures, each taxi becomes a multisensory portal into its decade, crowned by the Asian Paints crown as a symbol of elevating the everyday.
Together, these taxis carry four decades of Asian Paints Sharad Shamman’ cultural archive back into the streets of Kolkata, reaffirming its motto: A celebration of tradition, a festival of fervour.
This unique tribute to Kolkata was unveiled in the presence of Amit Syngle, MD and CEO of Asian Paints Ltd., and acclaimed West Bengal personalities Abir Chatterjee and Sauraseni Maitra.
To mark these four decades, Asian Paints turned to another Kolkata emblem-the yellow taxi-a vehicle that has been inseparable from the city’s Pujo journeys yet is now slowly disappearing from its streets.
For decades, these taxis ferried entire families on pandal-hopping trails, transported artisans with straw and clay from Kumartuli, and carried Asian Paints Sharad Shamman judges through crowded para lanes.
Reimagining them as art was both homage and reinvention: forty taxis, each representing a decade of the awards, were transformed into travelling archives. Inside the taxis, the intimacy of the pandal is recreated: curtains and wallpapers from the Asian Paints Royale range, under-seat lights, UV accents, reflective finishes of Royale Glitz.
Outside, the yellow remains visible, layered with each decade’s motifs and crowned with the “Crown of Pujo” — a quiet nod to both Asian Paints Sharad Shamman’s prestige and to Asian Paints’ own high-sheen legacy.
Speaking on the occasion, Amit Syngle, MD and CEO of Asian Paints Ltd. said, “When Asian Paints Sharad Shamman began in 1985, it set out to honour the imagination of Pujo. Forty years later, it has become a living chronicle of Kolkata’s creative spirit. For us at Asian Paints, Kolkata has always been more than a city; it has been a muse, shaping our understanding of colour as culture and of homes as worlds of meaning. On this milestone year, the yellow taxi felt like the most fitting tribute-an everyday companion of Pujo that has carried families, artisans, and stories across the city. This is our ‘Royale Tribute to Kolkata’.”
He added, “We are deeply grateful to Kolkata for allowing us to walk alongside its creativity for four decades. This project is about giving the joy back to the City of Joy — returning forty years of Asian Paints Sharad Shamman to the streets where it belongs and affirming what Asian Paints has always believed: that creativity must live not only in galleries or in homes, but in the everyday rhythm of life.”
From a newspaper advert in 1985 to taxis on the streets in 2025, Asian Paints Sharad Shamman has stayed true to its purpose: to celebrate creativity in Pujo, and to walk with the city that makes it possible. Cholte cholte chālīsh — forty years, and in every step, a story of Kolkata’s creativity that has become our own.
For four decades, Asian Paints Sharad Shamman has celebrated the true spirit of Durga Puja in Kolkata — from honouring the creativity of pandals to recognising the tireless efforts of artisans, sculptors, and committees who bring them to life; and they remain committed to celebrating this spirit with depth, creativity, and connection to the city.
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