Gush is a Singapore-based startup developing paint that cleans the air as it coats walls
The average person spends 90% of their life indoors—but the air inside homes and offices can be up to five times more polluted than outside.
That invisible problem became the starting point for Singapore paint producers Gush, a company that believes the walls themselves can help fix it.
Founded in 2017, gush produces sustainable paints that can purify the air, eliminate bacteria, regulate humidity, and even prevent mould. Best of all, they’re completely odourless.
The business’s products seem to have struck a chord. Eight years on, gush has grown from a two-person founding team into a company with partners and projects across the region and beyond.
We caught up with co-founder Lester Leong to find out how the company scaled from a small Singapore startup into a growing regional brand.
An idea born from personal frustrations
In our previous interview with the founding team, Lester shared that gush was born from personal frustrations. He first started the brand together with Ryan Lim, whom he met while working on an entrepreneurial project at the National University of Singapore. (Ryan has since left the company in 2021.)
The duo were sensitive to air pollution—Ryan had childhood asthma, and Lester suffered from sinusitis. After Singapore experienced a severe haze episode in 2015, they sought an alternative to bulky, high-energy air purifiers with costly filters.
The idea of using paint to purify the air came to us, and it seemed like a logical solution as we can them enable the biggest surface area in a room—the walls and ceiling—to work as a passive air purifier.
They spent three years developing a paint formula while still in school, consulting professors, testing prototypes, and refining it through feedback from friends and family.
How gush works is simple. At the heart of its paint is a proprietary catalyst that actively breaks down indoor air pollutants—the invisible chemicals released from furniture, cleaning agents, and everyday materials—into harmless substances like water vapour.
Unlike traditional paints or purifiers that merely absorb pollutants, gush’s proprietary formula neutralises air pollutants at a molecular level, continuously working even in the dark. Over the years, the paint has evolved to offer “better coverage, durability, anti-mould properties,” and has even been shipped to resorts in the Maldives and Bali.
Over 6K projects delivered
From the beginning, gush has taken a direct-to-consumer approach. Lester explained in a recent YouTube podcast that selling through retail stores would force them to give up significant margins.
Instead, they’ve started with e-commerce, which remains central to their strategy, allowing them to pass cost savings directly to customers.
While catering direct to customers was their playbook at the start, gush’s business today has moved to being largely enterprise-focused. Now, they’ve expanded to serving private commercial and industrial asset enhancement works, and large-scale refurbishment projects.
We chose this [B2B] focus because we have since also developed a full suite of enterprise products that have unique product advantages (one-coat exterior systems instead of the typical three, heat-reduction, anti-mould and algae) that translate directly into lifecycle savings at scale—fewer coats, less downtime, better indoor environmental quality, and lower maintenance for asset owners.
Lester Leong
Over the last five years, gush has delivered over 6,000 projects across residential, public, and commercial spaces. Notable projects include People’s Park Complex—though Lester joked that “the colour choice may be polarising”—Thomson Medical Centre, and more than 100 multi-storey carpark repaints slated for completion over the next two years.
According to Lester, the brand continues to see consistent growth, nearly doubling its top line almost every year.
Growing beyond Singapore’s borders
Since the early 2020s, gush begun laying the groundwork for expanding beyond Singapore’s borders through “channel partners and technical trials,” leveraging funds from its pre-Series A rounds.
In 2019, gush raised S$3 million, followed by close to S$4.7 million in a second pre-Series A round—first led by mainboard-listed property group City Developments Limited (CDL) and then by venture capital firm TNB Aura.
Competing with established players in the coatings space was tough, but the investments, particularly from CDL, added credibility, helping gush gain trust with enterprise customers and accelerating its expansion.
“Fundamentally, we have engineered our products to go above and beyond the demands of tropical markets to solve typical tropical problems of heat and humidity while also tackling high labour costs and indoor air pollution,” said Lester.
While the brand’s core market is still squarely in Singapore, they have a presence in Hong Kong, as well as the Gulf Cooperation Council, which is a regional bloc of six Middle Eastern countries: Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Oman.
But regional expansion has surfaced hurdles: customs and duties that affect landed cost, varying applicator skill levels, and the need to maintain consistent colour assurance across climates.
“We’ve addressed this through tighter partner enablement, clearer method statements, and pilot-led entries that build case studies before scaling,” said Lester.
gush had also explored the US market, but tariffs and trade barriers made it less viable. Lester explained that until the company can establish a local supply chain or manufacturing presence, they will not be able to pursue the US market further.
Gaining market share & expanding to more markets
Currently, gush remains steadfast in its focus. “We’re staying close to our core: high-performance coatings for the biggest surfaces around us,” said Lester.
Following its pre-Series A funding rounds, the company secured an undisclosed amount in Series A funding during the first quarter of 2023. Lester shared that the funding has been deployed into product development, manufacturing scale-up, and enterprise go-to-market initiatives—especially in Singapore, where “repainting cycles are predictable and data-rich.”
“We have also invested in operational tooling, from colour assurance to partner onboarding and a trade portal to professionalise the contractor experience,” he added.
Moving forward, the company is focused on increasing market share in Singapore’s MCST and HDB repainting cycles, measured by repeat wins and specification inclusion. The team is also pursuing selective regional scale, prioritising markets with strong product–market fit, while deepening its category range.
While take-up has been “encouraging” so far, challenges remain.
Convincing partners to move past legacy specifications and navigating regulatory approvals continue to test the team’s persistence—but gush is relying on pilot projects, data, and total cost-of-ownership models to demonstrate to customers why their solutions are superior for overall project outcomes.
Gush has come a long way since its early days. When we spoke to the founders back in 2020, they described the familiar grind of startup life—long nights, tight budgets, and countless rounds of testing just to be taken seriously.
Their first weeks involved having to obtain multiple test reports and certifications to even be able to speak with big-name customers, who did not accept a prototype and demanded heaps of documentation. They relied heavily on competitions and government grants for funding and had to work within a tight budget.
The founders also didn’t draw a salary for the first half of the year and were dipping into their savings instead. But that grit has paid off, with the company establishing itself as a regional player in the coatings and high-performance paint industry.
“Our job,” Lester summed up, “is to make surfaces not just beautiful, but functional. By combining anti-mould, air-purifying interiors with heat-reflective exteriors, we can lift indoor environmental quality, reduce cooling loads, and cut repainting time and waste.
Over time, as cities densify, these incremental gains at every repaint cycle add up—estate by estate, school by school. That’s the future we’re building toward.
Featured Image Credit: Gush
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