Emami scouting inorganic opportunities in healthy foods, pet care sectors

Kolkata-based fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) company Emami Ltd is looking for inorganic growth opportunities in categories like health foods, pet care, and nutraceuticals, among others.

“We have invested in several direct-to-consumer brands with the idea that gradually, if the company does well, we bring them into the fold of Emami. Apart from those, we are always open to new opportunities and partnering with companies that are doing exciting things in the consumer space,” said Harsha Vardhan Agarwal, vice chairman and managing director at Emami Ltd.

He was speaking on the sidelines of the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Massmerize conference.

“We are looking for opportunities of different sizes and are considering organic opportunities in personal care and health care, as those are the categories we operate in. Apart from that, we are exploring health food, nutrition, and pet care—in which we have recently invested,” he added.

In August this year, Emami acquired 100 per cent ownership of men’s grooming brand The Man Company.

Agarwal also identified quick commerce as a fast-growing channel for the company.

“All of the new channels, e-commerce and quick commerce—which is a recent phenomenon—have both grown very fast. We expect 4-5 times growth in the quick commerce channel in the coming two years,” he said.

According to a new Deloitte report launched at the conference, the quick commerce segment has grown by 230 per cent from 2021 to 2023.

“For large FMCG brands in FY24, leading FMCG firms reported nearly a 2 times increase in the share of quick commerce within their total e-commerce sales, reaching around 35 per cent of online sales,” the report titled ‘SPURring Growth in FMCG, Retail, and E-commerce Sectors in India’ stated.

Speaking further about the upcoming festival season, Agarwal said the industry is poised to witness a strong season.

“The outlook is quite positive for the festival season. The monsoon has been good, and we are really looking forward to it. We have also seen some improvement in rural demand on the back of monsoon and government spending in the area. So we are bullish on the demand uptick in rural areas,” he said.