Corner shops to be fulcrum of consumer goods business: Reliance Consumer’s Krishnakumar

In an interview with MintT. Krishnakumar, director of RCPL, said that the company, which entered the packaged consumer goods market in 2022, is on track to scale its products beyond the Campa and Independence brands. Its strategy focuses on scaling existing brands nationally and using recent acquisitions to attract consumers in smaller markets. He added that RCPL will also ramp up its national marketing activities over the next two years after achieving a larger scale. RCPL reported a revenue of ₹11,450 crore in FY25. Edited excerpts.

Can you share some updates on announcements made last week?

We are going to keep doing more of the same. We have seen traction in categories like beverages, along with home care (Dozo dishwash bar) and biscuits (under the Independence brand). We need to really expand our supply chain much faster than what we anticipated because if all categories take off at the same time, we will need to expand supply chain.

So, we are planning to set up food parks across the country; we want to have a food park in every state. Alongside, we will still have a hybrid model. We are working with partners who co-manufacture, but considering the scale of work that needs to be done, we are going to have some amount of manufacturing, which will be done by us. For instance, for home and personal care we don’t need distributed manufacturing like we do for food and beverages because of shelf life constraints etc.

What are your plans to diversify revenues beyond Campa (beverages) and Independence (staples) going forward?

We are diversifying already. Their (Campa and Independence) salience is coming down every month; which is good despite them growing so well. We have to set up a supply chain for many of these (new) categories that are showing traction, so there will be a six-month lag before they get into the league of a Campa.

You advertising and promotional spends have been low relative to the portfolio. By when will RCPL become a large advertiser?

We didn’t really put too much money into advertising last year. Our first big foray into marketing started with Campa during the IPL (2025). Marketing will scale up with wider distribution of each category. As the categories hit 30-35% penetration, we will start advertising.

Consumer companies spend somewhere around 8-10% of their revenues on advertising and marketing—we are just a fraction of that at this point. We will reach that level when we get the scale and distribution. Our highest spending per rupee of revenue would be on beverages because it has the best distribution at this point of time, followed by Independence. By FY27 we will be a national advertiser.

To what extent does RCPL rely on modern trade? Or is general trade your preferred distribution channel?

We have identified general trade (mom-and-pop stores) as the core of our business. For most of our products, 100% of their journey starts from general trade. On the consumer brand-side, general trade will be almost 90% of our business; if we take brands sold inside Reliance Retail stores then it’ll be 70%. Campa, for instance, is 90% general trade. We think, in the present Indian context unless something changes dramatically in the next one or two years, the mainstay of any consumer business will be general trade.

Your M&A playbook has largely been around picking regional brands with strong brand recall (like SilCampa, Velvette) but limited distribution—will that change?

For us, mergers and acquisitions (M&A) is a plank to augment whatever we are doing. Our basic philosophy is to give global quality at affordable prices. We see if an asset can help us enter the market faster with some residual equity, even if it’s regional or very old brands, or if they have some product or technology which we can immediately launch. Also, we look at assets at a reasonable price—we don’t want to buy anything at an exorbitant price because the exorbitant M&As are a distraction.

We have a clear roadmap on the categories we will enter—our first choice is to grow organically because we are able to scale it up as fast as an acquisition. If we find that we are taking some time and something interesting comes, and it’s not very expensive, then we will look at its.

How has distribution grown over the past 12 months?

The business is still scaling up. We are at about 1.5 million outlets—we want to reach up to 3 million by March next year. The goal is to get 5 million. Beverage and staple will be nationally available by March. But most of our brands are now reaching anywhere between three and five lakh outlets. Beverage continues to be the most distributed category for us. We’re going to have brands at three levels—those that are national and scaling up, then those that go international and then brands which are regional or hyper local. For us to get an understanding of these three sets of brands will take some time.

Will RCPL continue to sustain low price points as you have done with Campa?

On staples (Independence) we are not as low-priced because commodity prices dictate our pricing. We are possibly at the lower end compared to competition but the difference is tiny—anywhere between three and seven percent. However, we are priced very attractively, like our packaged water under Independence is sold at ₹10 (750 ml); competition is priced at ₹10 (500ml). We will give the best price-value equation to our consumers.

For how long will you continue to be in an investment phase?

We are constantly working on profits. We believe by the fifth year (the company is in its second fiscal year of business), we should be at benchmark profits. We are constantly ensuring that we do make some money. These sweet price points ( ₹10 etc) are not reached without a clear line of sight to profit.

What are your views on urban consumption? Especially with large listed players calling out a slowdown in the market?

Companies have to find ways of increasing consumption. Simply put, in a low-consumption economy like India, a FMCG business has the ability to grow at 3x the GDP growth. That’s because in any category, we are at 20 to 30% of global consumption levels. There will be headwinds and challenges and we may stutter a bit, but the job of the management is to manage headwinds and keep increasing consumption.