{"id":6962,"date":"2026-05-01T16:03:00","date_gmt":"2026-05-01T10:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thirdeyesight.in\/?p=6962"},"modified":"2026-05-05T16:24:35","modified_gmt":"2026-05-05T10:54:35","slug":"project-falcon-and-tatas-consumer-coup-the-making-of-an-fmcg-challenger-to-hul-itc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myechoproject.com\/TES\/project-falcon-and-tatas-consumer-coup-the-making-of-an-fmcg-challenger-to-hul-itc\/","title":{"rendered":"Project Falcon and Tata’s Consumer Coup: The Making of an FMCG Challenger to HUL, ITC"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Yuthika Bhargava & Vikash Tripathi, Outlook Business <\/em>
Mumbai, 1 May 2026 <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For generations of Indians, the word Tata hasn\u2019t just been a brand, it has been a permanent resident in our homes. Think back to the kitchens of your childhood. It was the familiar packet of Tata salt, the Desh ka Namak, that seasoned every meal. It was the steaming cup of Tata tea that signalled the start of the day for elders at home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In every Indian household, the name represents trust and legacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Yet, when N Chandrasekaran, chairman of Tata Sons, wanted to hire Whirlpool India\u2019s head Sunil D\u2019Souza to lead Tata Global Beverages (TGBL) in September 2019, he got a shock refusal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Who in their right minds wouldn\u2019t want to join a Tata company?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Well, D\u2019Souza hadn\u2019t heard much about TGBL. In fact, his colleague at Whirlpool India had called it a \u201csleepy company\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, TGBL\u2019s revenues were a meagre \u20b97,408cr compared to close to \u20b950,000cr and \u20b940,000cr logged by fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) heavyweights ITC and Hindustan Unilever (HUL), respectively, in 2018\u201319.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Experts had noted TGBL had not much to show in terms of major product innovation for years. Primarily a tea and coffee company, it was locked in a low-growth cycle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2018, various analysts had remarked that TGBL\u2019s growth was muted as it wasn\u2019t selling anything beyond tea and coffee.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At TGBL\u2019s annual general meeting on July 5, 2018, Chandrasekaran said the company would exit loss-making subsidiaries and focus on profitable ones that can be scaled up. \u201cEven though in volume terms, the company continued to be number one in the Indian market, the same was not true in value terms,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So, D\u2019Souza\u2019s immediate \u201cno way\u201d to the job offer was justified. TGBL wasn\u2019t on his radar or anyone\u2019s at the time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the headhunter convinced him to meet Chandrasekaran.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meeting, says D\u2019Souza, made all the difference for him. He recalls the Tata Sons\u2019 chairman saying \u201cI have the money. But I don\u2019t have the team to run it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But the clincher for him was Chandrasekaran\u2019s larger plan to foray into the FMCG space and the intent to disrupt the market.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In December 2019, Tatas announced D\u2019Souza\u2019s appointment as managing director and chief executive effective April 2020. One more important addition to this FMCG team was Tata Sons\u2019 Ajit Krishnakumar as chief operating officer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What followed was the duo\u2019s visits to Mumbai, Bengaluru and Gurgaon. They walked to distributor offices and kirana stores and sat through market visits. \u201cWe drew out in great detail what we wanted this company to look like,\u201d says Krishnakumar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mandate from Chandrasekaran was simple. He wanted a company commensurate with the Tata name, one that shared the same shelf space as the likes of HUL and ITC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Humble Beginnings<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mission to become an insurgent company in the FMCG space kickstarted with the formation of Tata Consumer Products (TCPL) in February 2020 by merging TGBL\u2019s tea and coffee units with Tata Chemicals\u2019 salt and pulse businesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, with established FMCG rivals like HUL, ITC and Nestl\u00e9 India, D\u2019Souza and Krishnakumar had their tasks cut out. The competition had a century of headstart in India.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the Tata group itself, TCPL ranked eighth by revenue in 2019\u201320, behind Tata Motors, TCS, Tata Steel, Tata Power, Titan, Tata Communications and even Tata Chemicals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But \u201cthings couldn\u2019t get any worse than this, right? We were already at the bottom of the heap in FMCG. You could only get better,\u201d recalls D\u2019Souza about his mindset at the time (see pg 24).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Building a brand name as a Tata company opens doors. But competing is another. Could this new company take on HUL, Nestl\u00e9 and ITC?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TCPL started by trimming the portfolio, streamlining the consumer products businesses spread across five continents, from India and the US to the UK, Canada, South Africa and Australia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Australia, the company held a 7% share of the tea market but was also running an out-of-home coffee dispensing business that was losing millions of dollars. It was shut down in December 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the US, a food-service joint venture, including a tea factory and a distribution unit, was disposed of as well in March 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe had 45 legal entities. That\u2019s not tenable,\u201d D\u2019Souza says. \u201cWe exited areas where we didn\u2019t see value. The focus clearly shifted to not just the topline, but margins.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six years later, TCPL\u2019s entity count stands at 25 and is well on the way to the target of 18 entities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

What stood out in the next six years is TCPL\u2019s sole focus to dominate the food and beverages (F&B) category. The company\u2019s mantra: think big, move fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By late 2020, once the initial scramble post the merger had settled, TCPL ran a strategic exercise called Project Falcon. The result was a playbook: categories to foray into, categories to stay out of, where to build and what to buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The year 2021 provided a starting point for TCPL. In March that year, the United Nations officially declared 2023 as the International Year of Millets, acting on a proposal from India. The country being the largest producer of millets, accounting for 20% of global production, wanted to raise awareness of millet\u2019s role in improving nutrition and creating sustainable market opportunities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The timing was fortuitous for TCPL. In 2021, its first acquisition, Soulfull, was a millet-based health-food brand. This \u20b9155.8cr deal gave Tatas a foothold in a category it couldn\u2019t have credibly entered on its own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within three years of acquisition, Soulfull\u2019s distribution had grown from 15,000 outlets to 300,000, carried on the back of the Tata\u2019s existing network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Three years later, in January 2024, when TCPL announced two deals with combined worth of \u20b97,000cr in quick succession, its stocks fell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The market wasn\u2019t convinced initially. TCPL had just committed roughly 40% of its annual revenue to two brands it did not build. At the time, it was a new player with its core business running on single-digit margins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Analysts at Ambit Capital estimated the acquisitions would cut 2025\u201326 earnings by roughly 10%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first, a \u20b95,100cr deal, was to buy Capital Foods, the company behind Ching\u2019s Secret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The second was a wellness play, a \u20b91,900cr cheque for Organic India, a Lucknow-based brand with a devoted following in the US.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D\u2019Souza had faith in these big-cheque acquisitions. \u201cWe are not playing this game for the next one or two years. We do these acquisitions knowing that we put money there. It will bear out over a period of time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ching\u2019s Secret had spent decades building the desi Chinese category in urban Indian homes almost single-handedly\u2014the Schezwan chutney, the noodles and sauces.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for Organic India, it had a network of farmers across Madhya Pradesh and Uttarakhand, a manufacturing facility in Lucknow and decades of Ayurvedic credibility in the American wellness market. It was built over years of relationships that TCPL simply did not have and could not quickly acquire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And the numbers weren\u2019t disappointing. By the third quarter of 2025\u201326, Capital Foods and Organic India together were generating \u20b9354cr in quarterly revenue, up 15% year on year, at gross margins of roughly 48%, well above TCPL\u2019s blended average of 43%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motilal Oswal expects integration costs to ease substantially by 2026\u201327, after which the margin story should become clearer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fight for Shelf Space<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

From the get go TCPL was clear about the categories it wanted to enter and to avoid as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It didn\u2019t want any stake in the basic edible-oil segment. This shelf had far too many players led by the likes of Fortune and Saffola.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But cold-pressed oil was a different ballgame. Consumers here were buying into a health claim with no way to verify if the product was trustworthy. \u201cThe Tata name does the magic there,\u201d says D\u2019Souza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In August 2023, TCPL launched a range of cold-pressed oils under its brand Tata Simply Better, a new brand that was launched in 2022 to enter the plant-based mock-meat category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The logic: find the trust deficit, fill it with the four-letter Tata name, became the basis for every category TCPL considered entering.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The sweet spot for the insurgent company was categories that were fragmented, where consumers didn\u2019t fully trust what they were buying and where a credible brand could change the equation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Biscuits was another category that TCPL gave a skip.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Britannia and Parle owned 56% of the market, built over decades of backward-integrated manufacturing and distribution muscle.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This restraint, wrote Motilal Oswal, in a recent note, is \u201crare in Indian FMCG\u201d. Categories like biscuits, snacks, colas and base edible oils are permanently off the table, crowded segments where the Tata brand adds no meaningful trust-led differentiation. \u201cSuch portfolio discipline is a positive indicator of capital allocation quality,\u201d the note observes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Built organically, cold-pressed oil is now running at an annual revenue of \u20b9350cr. Dry fruits, another category Tatas entered with the same trust deficit logic is at a \u20b9300cr run rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What differentiates TCPL from other FMCG players?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The categories that Tatas have built or bought into are still being defined. HUL and Nestl\u00e9, on the other hand, are dominant in mature markets where penetration is already high. HUL is buying established brands in categories it rules, plugging gaps in existing portfolios. TCPL is buying into categories it has never played in, at scale, while the core business is still being built.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether this is disciplined offence or over-extension is a question the next two years of integration will answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Even before acquisitions came into play, among the first things D\u2019Souza and Krishnakumar did was to build accountability. There had been no one person who owned a category (tea, salt or pulses) from manufacture to sales.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They created category leaders who were responsible for the product\u2019s profit and loss, bar the fixed costs. Functions that did not exist were created.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2020, Tata Salt was present in nearly 2mn retail outlets across India. TCPL\u2019s own salespeople directly visited just 150,000 of them. The remaining 1.85mn stores were being supplied through a chain of middlemen, called super stockists or consignee agents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These middlemen picked up Tata Salt in bulk from big distributors and moved it onward through their own networks. No one from TCPL knew what was selling fast, what wasn\u2019t or what product a rival had placed on the shelf just two rows away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat shows the strength of the brand and also the lack of distribution reach,\u201d says D\u2019Souza. In FMCG, this gap between a brand\u2019s total reach and its direct reach is called the wholesale multiplier. It measures how many outlets are stocking your product for every outlet you directly supply. A multiplier of five is considered normal. TCPL\u2019s was 15, a number almost unheard of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This meant TCPL had no direct relationship with over 90% of the shops and no mechanism to introduce anything new in those shops.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was this big layer [of middlemen] in each state. We removed that entire layer. That layer alone was about 1.2% in terms of cost. Then we appointed proper distributors, recruited the right people and rebuilt the distribution system,\u201d says D\u2019Souza. This was a saving of 36 paise on every 1kg pack of Tata Salt with an MRP of \u20b930.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rebuilding the entire distribution ecosystem took six to seven months. The distributor base was cut from 4,500 to around 1,500\u20131,600. These distributors were now carrying the full portfolio, reporting directly to TCPL. The sales force was expanded by 30%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The results were quick. TCPL\u2019s direct outlet reach stands at approximately 2.3mn today from roughly 500,000 in 2019\u201320. The total reach is 4.4mn outlets now.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere are two key benefits to getting closer to the retailer. It supports margins and gives you better visibility into what\u2019s happening at the point of sale,\u201d says Arvind Singhal, chairman of The Knowledge Company, a management-consulting company.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Progress is real. But TCPL has miles to go. HUL reaches more than 9mn outlets, built over nine decades. ITC reaches 7mn. Nestl\u00e9 5.2mn. India has roughly 12\u201315mn kirana stores.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe whole premise was to create a distribution funnel through which you can then push different products,\u201d says D\u2019Souza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bump in the Road<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first real test for TCPL was whether the idea of pushing new products through the distribution funnel would work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pradeep Gupta, a kirana store owner in Varanasi, has been a witness that it worked. Six years ago, two products were always on his shelf: Tata Salt and Tata Tea Premium. He didn\u2019t need a salesperson to tell him to stock them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, new products from Tata Sampann spices to Ching\u2019s Secret sauces and Soulfull rusk are on the shelves of Gupta\u2019s tiny store. TCPL\u2019s distribution network made it happen. A distributor who had built his business around Tata Salt would now also handle Ching\u2019s Secret. A salesperson who knew how to move a commodity would now pitch a branded sauce.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But not everyone was happy. The All India Consumer Products Distributors Federation (AICPDF) went up in arms against TCPL in 2025. Distributors were protesting excessive targets, stocks were piling up in warehouses and damaged goods sitting for months with no settlement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The mismatch was structural. Salt moves through wholesale with 80% of it never seeing a retail salesperson. Most of the newer growth products like Ching\u2019s Secret are sold almost entirely through direct retail.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Running both through the same distributor was asking a man who sold salt by the tonne to also build a market for Schezwan chutney.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The AICPDF president Dhairyashil H Patil explains what went wrong. \u201cSalt is typically sold in large volumes. Products like Tata Sampann [a packaged pulses brand launched in 2017 under Tata Chemicals] and tea are the opposite, only about 8\u201310% goes through wholesale. After the merger with Capital Foods, there was a complete mismatch.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Distributors built around salt did not find it viable to handle retail-heavy products. \u201cMost Tata distributors derive 60\u201370% of their turnover from salt, so their focus remains there,\u201d adds Patil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TCPL eventually had to take back damaged goods sitting with distributors for six to eight months. D\u2019Souza\u2019s response was to separate the networks entirely.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TCPL\u2019s growth businesses like Ching\u2019s, Soulfull and Organic India had their own distributors and sales teams in just three months. \u201cFor any other company, it would have taken at least a year or more,\u201d D\u2019Souza says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also, the portfolio TCPL had inherited gave its own answer to what the distribution funnel could carry. Sampann, a \u201chobby for Tata Chemicals\u201d, arrived at the merger doing \u20b9150\u2013200cr in revenue. In 2025\u201326, Sampann is expected to touch \u20b91,700\u20131,800cr, with pulses alone contributing \u20b91,000 crore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe whole DNA of the company is to stay agile and make sure to move at full speed,\u201d says D\u2019Souza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fast and Furious<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

TCPL moved at full speed indeed when it came to trends. In May 2019, Beyond Meat, a company that made plant-based burgers from pea protein, listed on Nasdaq. Its stock more than doubled on the first day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within months, McDonald\u2019s was testing a meatless McPlant and KFC was piloting plant-based chicken. Plant-based meat looked like the future of food.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TCPL bought into the trend. In 2022, it launched plant-based mock meat under the Tata Simply Better brand. However, the global buzz died sooner than expected. Two years later, TCPL exited the category.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The exit is not the point. What matters is that the product took 150 days from concept to shelf. TCPL had built something that would have been impossible two years before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mock meat required food science to replicate the texture of meat from plant protein, process technology, a team of chefs, food scientists and packaging engineers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Capabilities were built from scratch. In the beginning, the R&D team was just 10\u201315 people. Today, it operates across three centres: Bengaluru as the research and packaging science hub, Mumbai for food innovation and product development, and Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh, anchoring the wellness work after the Organic India acquisition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The team remains lean, around 60 people, roughly one-third the size of comparable FMCG rivals, estimates Vikas Gupta, R&D head at TCPL.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When D\u2019Souza arrived in 2019, just 0.8% of TCPL\u2019s revenue came from new product launches. The industry benchmark is 5%. TCPL was nowhere close. Today, that number stands at roughly 5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Onkar Kelji, research analyst at Indsec Securities, a brokerage firm, frames the economics of the chase: the early returns on innovation can be thin, he says, as companies push products aggressively and launch on e-commerce where margins are typically lower than general trade. \u201cBut if these products scale, they deliver better margins over time.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Across the industry, the contribution of newly launched products has generally stayed under 5%. With acquisitions, that mix is expected to rise, notes Kelji.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In FMCG, innovation is not only about launching entirely new categories. It is also about rethinking what already exists. \u201cWe were singularly focused on vacuum-evaporated iodised salt,\u201d says D\u2019Souza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The thinking that replaced it was simpler. \u201cGive the consumer what they want. Plain salt. Salt with iron, with zinc. Low sodium for the health-conscious. Himalayan rock salt for the premium buyer. Sendha [during Navaratri]. One product became a portfolio,\u201d adds D\u2019Souza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A patented granulation technology was developed for double-fortified salt, solving a long-standing industry problem of how to add iron to iodised salt and keep it stable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TCPL also produced the Tata Coffee Cold Coffee liquid concentrate, a first-of-its-kind product in the Indian market that lets consumers make cold coffee at home without equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first 100 product launches after the merger took three-and-a-half years. The next 100 took 16 months. At one point, the company was turning out a new product every week, each one requiring its own supply chain, packaging, shelf-space negotiation and own sales story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For a company that was criticised in 2018 for launching almost nothing new for years, this was a different metabolism entirely. \u201cIt\u2019s easier when you are doing everything from scratch, says D\u2019Souza, adding \u201cAs soon as we see a trend, we are on top of it and running with it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E-commerce is a good example of how TCPL, weeks into its merger, took on the very real challenge of lockdown and built a new digital vertical to boast of.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Lessons from Pandemic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 2020, most Indians had online grocery apps on their mobile phones. These were rarely used. But the Covid-19 pandemic and subsequent lockdown reshaped this landscape.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

BigBasket\u2019s servers strained with massive order volume surge. Dunzo crashed repeatedly. Amazon Fresh ran out of delivery slots. Millions of urban Indians were struggling to restock their kitchen shelves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the time, TCPL\u2019s entire e-commerce operation was one person\u2019s part-time responsibility. The southern regional sales head looked after e-commerce. TCPL had to race against time to build a digital channel. And D\u2019Souza\u2019s team built it fast.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E-commerce became a dedicated function with its own head. A modern trade team was created. Every new product launch went digital first. E-commerce gave TCPL something general trade never could: unfiltered data on what actually works.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While the company\u2019s overall innovation-to-sales ratio was 3.4% by 2022\u201323, it was 10% on e-commerce. Products that proved themselves online were then pushed into general trade.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe beauty of e-commerce is that it is only you and the consumer. It is the power of your product and your brand and your value proposition,\u201d D\u2019Souza said in an earnings call.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

E-commerce\u2019s revenue contribution at the time of merger was 2.5%. By late 2021, it was 7%, a growth of 130% in a single year. By 2024\u201325, it reached 14%, overtaking modern trade for the first time. By the third quarter of 2025\u201326, e-commerce and quick commerce together stood at 18.5%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI don\u2019t think anyone else is in this ballpark,\u201d says D\u2019Souza. He is not wrong. HUL\u2019s equivalent figure runs at 7\u20138%, Nestl\u00e9 India\u2019s at 8.5%. The company that almost missed the decade\u2019s defining channel shift now leads it among its peers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What makes the number more significant, according to Motilal Oswal, is TCPL\u2019s margins on quick commerce are comparable to traditional channels, unlike most peers, who are seeing margin erosion on the platform.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Tata group\u2019s acquisition of BigBasket in May 2021 gave TCPL a window into how millions of Indians shop for groceries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In an earlier earnings call D\u2019Souza pointed out that BigBasket is a group company, not a TCPL asset. But within the group, he said, they were working closely to find synergies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The channel shift also fits the company\u2019s portfolio. Quick commerce skews toward the premium buyer: the person reaching for Himalayan rock salt at \u20b9100 rather than iodised salt at \u20b930, Organic India\u2019s tulsi tea rather than a commodity tea bag.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The premium end of TCPL\u2019s portfolio, built over five years, is precisely what the fastest-growing channel wants. The mass business still dominates revenue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Half-way Mark<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In January 2021, D\u2019Souza said, \u201cIf we get it right, the rewards would be endless. If we didn\u2019t, we\u2019d have to live with it for a long time.\u201d Five years later, he rates himself \u201cfive out of 10\u201d. Ask him what TCPL has that HUL and Nestl\u00e9 don\u2019t, and the answer is the four letters T-A-T-A.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Here is what five out of 10 looks like. TCPL\u2019s revenue has grown over 80% between 2019\u201320 and 2024\u201325. In annual terms, that is a compound rate of roughly 13%, faster than HUL\u2019s 9.8%, Nestl\u00e9 India\u2019s 10.5% and ITC\u2019s 9.7% over the same period, albeit off a smaller base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TCPL reported a consolidated annual turnover of \u20b917,618cr in 2024\u201325. Its operating margin, what survives from every rupee of revenue after paying for everything, runs at 14\u201315%. HUL\u2019s is 23\u201324%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Closing this gap requires high-margin businesses like Ching\u2019s, Organic India, Soulfull, cold-pressed oil to grow fast enough to become roughly a third of total revenue. Right now, they are 8\u20139%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Tea costs, which TCPL cannot control, need to normalise. Integration costs from the 2024 acquisitions need to wind down.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Motilal Oswal projects margins reaching 17% in three years. The path to 20%-plus, where HUL and Nestl\u00e9 operate, is considerably longer than that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Return on capital, how much profit a company earns on every rupee invested, tells the same story from a different angle. TCPL\u2019s sits at roughly 10%. HUL\u2019s is 27%. D\u2019Souza points out that the core business, stripped of the 2024 acquisition capital, delivers 30%-plus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The acquisitions are dragging the consolidated number while they are still being absorbed. Most analysts expect the trajectory to improve. The question is whether it does so within the timeline management has guided.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

D\u2019Souza describes the portfolio in three segments: the international business: Tetley, steady and cash-generative. The India staples: tea and salt, large but low-margin, subject to commodity costs he cannot control. And the growth businesses: Ching\u2019s, Organic India, Soulfull and cold-pressed oil, which are small today but carry the highest margins and expectations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cAll three pieces need to come together,\u201d says D\u2019Souza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cEach piece in the portfolio has a very specific purpose,\u201d explains Krishnakumar. International for steady margins. Sampann for growth. Capital Foods and Organic India for both. \u201cThe headline target ties it together: a double-digit-plus topline and a bottom line growing higher than that,\u201d he adds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Today, the portfolio spans tea, coffee, water, ready-to-drink beverages, salt, pulses, spices, ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat offerings, breakfast cereals, snacks and mini meals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the product range is in the food and beverages (F&B) universe. The company does not yet cover much else. \u201cWithout personal care or home care, TCPL is not yet a comprehensive FMCG powerhouse,\u201d says Devangshu Dutta, founder of Third Eyesight, a boutique management-consulting firm.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Krishnakumar\u2019s response is: \u201cOn a revenue basis, F&B accounts for nearly 80% of the FMCG universe. Outside of F&B, it requires a very different set of skills, a very different DNA.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

TCPL is not making bets in personal-care or home-care segments in the near future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The Long Game<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s no magic breakout moment,\u201d says Krishnakumar. What he points to instead are accumulations: salt crossing million packets a day, the stock market re-rating and the innovation pipeline turning out a new product every week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The competition, however, is not waiting. HUL\u2019s quick commerce is logging 3% of revenue, growing at over 100%. ITC plans to spend \u20b920,000cr over five years with the bulk for foods. Nestl\u00e9 is deepening its product pipeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These rival FMCG companies are now moving faster than they have in years. For TCPL, the race has gotten harder.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the same time, these giant competitiors have their own challenges. HUL draws only 25% of its revenue from foods. Nestl\u00e9 is concentrated in dairy and confectionery.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

ITC, which is still moving away from tobacco, draws 40% of its revenue from packaged foods and personal care combined.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While these Goliaths have their attention split, TCPL\u2019s focused approach is perhaps the one thing they cannot replicate. \u201cIn any category that we have a stake in, we would be among the top three brands,\u201d says a confident D\u2019Souza.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six years in, the pieces are in place. \u201cOur strategic road map and the strong foundation we have laid for the business have yielded good results\u2026Our overarching ambition is to evolve into a full-fledged FMCG company,\u201d Chandrasekaran said in TCPL annual report 2024\u201325.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Whether TCPL becomes big and matches his vision is a question the next six years will answer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the Tata group, TCPL\u2019s revenue ranking may not have moved much: eighth in 2019\u201320, seventh today. Both profits and market capitalisation have grown more than three times. It\u2019s now worth over \u20b91 lakh crore, nearly seven times Tata Chemicals, and more than double that of Tata Communications.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The market is not pricing what TCPL is. It is pricing what it might become. \u201cBecause if you\u2019re not in the top three, there is no point,\u201d says D\u2019Souza. The man who chose to walk into the \u201csleepy company\u201d is not done yet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Published in Outlook Business<\/a>)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Yuthika Bhargava & Vikash Tripathi, Outlook Business Mumbai, 1 May 2026 For generations of Indians, the word Tata hasn\u2019t just been a brand, it has been a permanent resident in our homes. Think back to the kitchens of your childhood. It was the familiar packet of Tata salt, the Desh ka Namak, that seasoned every […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6963,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[708,746,215,625,37,3,43,46],"tags":[633,100,295,353,1013,381,174,101,102,103,106,691,1014,600,264,250,214,291,216,292,293,217,112,267,624,744,59,191,724,690,808,256,499,581,197,70,700,294,63,718,65,1012,124,66,569,662,715,1011,629],"class_list":["post-6962","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty-personal-care","category-fmcg","category-food-grocery","category-health-wellness","category-marketing","category-press-quotes","category-retail","category-strategy","tag-big-basket","tag-brand-building","tag-brand-portfolio","tag-business-strategy","tag-chings","tag-coffee","tag-consumer","tag-consumer-goods","tag-consumer-markets","tag-consumer-products","tag-consumer-segments","tag-distribution","tag-dunzo","tag-ecommerce","tag-emerging-markets","tag-fmcg","tag-food","tag-food-beverage","tag-food-grocery","tag-food-and-grocery","tag-food-processing","tag-food-service","tag-global-business","tag-growth","tag-health","tag-hul","tag-india","tag-indian-market","tag-itc","tag-mergers-and-acquisitions","tag-nestle","tag-omnichannel","tag-online","tag-online-retail","tag-organic","tag-organised-retail","tag-packaged-foods","tag-processed-food","tag-product-development","tag-quick-commerce","tag-retail","tag-soulfull","tag-strategy","tag-supply-chain","tag-tata","tag-tata-group","tag-tea","tag-tetley","tag-wellness"],"yoast_head":"\nProject 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