Indians' grocery baskets grow bigger in FY25: Kantar report

Time of India

10 hours ago

Indians made 156 shopping trips to grocery stores in FY25, unchanged since a year ago but the basket size increased in both value and number of packs, said a new report by global research firm Kantar.
While they made a purchase once in every 56 hours or close to once in every two days, the average pack sizes have risen by 16%, indicating a shift towards slightly larger quantities. Also, the number of packs rose 13% or by 26 pieces translating into nearly 226 FMCG packs purchased on average compared to 200 packs in FY24. "This indicates confidence returning to the shopper. In addition to this, premiumisation continues, with moderate consumption growth, which leads us to believe that we would see moderate to strong growth in urban FMCG building up in the next quarters," said K Ramakrishnan, managing director, South Asia, Worldpanel Division. "If the macroeconomic factors remain favourable, we should also see rural recovery as we head into the second half of the year."
Demand for daily groceries, household and personal products worsened to a two-year low in the March quarter. FMCG volume sales growth in Jan-March quarter was 3.5%, slowest since March quarter 2023. A year ago, the market had grown 5.5% in the same quarter.
But the slowdown is not universal. For instance, of the 22 stock- market listed companies that Kantar tracked, their volume growth rate was just 3.6%. However, the rest of the branded market is doing better at 3.9% and unbranded products have seen a significantly higher growth of 6.1% in the year.
"Commentary for unlisted players, including Indian subsidiaries of multinational corporations, D2C players, and regional brands indicates a slightly better performance, underscoring broader demand resilience," said Saugata Gupta, managing director at
Marico
, at an earnings call. "Data of some of the D2C and unlisted players do not get captured and the growth could be a tad higher," he said.
Kantar monitors branded and unorganised products, including unpackaged voluminous commodities and the numbers reflect slower sales across categories and markets in the last many quarters. For most listed companies, urban markets account for anywhere between 50% and 70% of their overall sales and over the past year, inflationary pressures, low wage growth and higher housing rentals weighed on urban demand for daily groceries and staples.
Consumer goods companies have posted mixed volume growth trends.
Hindustan Unilever
posted a 2% volume growth, while
Godrej Consumer Products
volume was slightly higher at 4%. Tata Consumer's volume rose about 6% and Marico saw a 7% volume growth during the March quarter.
While companies have flagged a softness in demand amid shrinking household budgets, most predicted a strong recovery in this fiscal year.
"I am reasonably optimistic about the recovery happening. It's not going to be a hockey stick. We have seen gradual recovery, and this trend is going to continue into the next year as well," Varun Berry, vice-chairman,
Britannia
, told investors.
INDIAN METROS
South Delhi consumers consumed 240 kg of fast-moving consumer goods per year, double the national average while with '39,325 spent on FMCG, West Delhi consumers outpaced the entire country by twice as much. An average urban Indian household makes 128 visits to the shop to buy FMCG (excludes atta).
The average Mumbai household visits 135 times for the same annually. But the households in the slum belt purchase FMCG in 233 visits. This corridor comprises localities such as Dharavi, Bandra East, Khar East, Santacruz East, Dawri Nagar, Prabhat Colony, etc., and purchases just 541 grams in every visit, the least among all metro clusters across India.
With ₹227 spent on every kilo of FMCG on an average, Southwest Bengaluru comprising RR Nagar, Mysore Road, and Kengeri is the most premium FMCG cluster among top metros. Average city level spend-per-kg of FMCG itself is a strong ₹211 in Bengaluru, while no other city has a per-kg spend of more than ₹195.