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Marico’s digital-first portfolio crossed an annualised revenue run-rate of Rs 1,100 crore in FY26, while e-commerce and D2C channels together reached 20% of its India business, with quick commerce at approximately 5%. The company’s India turnover grew 28% year-on-year to Rs 10,348 crore. Foods and Premium Personal Care, including digital-first brands, accounted for roughly 23% of India revenues, with management projecting that share could reach 33% by FY30. Chairman Harsh Mariwala described the company as evolving into a digital-first multinational FMCG enterprise. The company is emphasizing profitable growth, unit economics and capital efficiency alongside scale, while continuing to invest in traditional distribution through Project SETU.
Key Elements
Marico’s digital transformation has crossed a significant threshold. The consumer goods company’s digital-first portfolio exited fiscal year 2026 with an annualised revenue run-rate of more than Rs 1,100 crore, while e-commerce and direct-to-consumer channels together accounted for 20% of its India business, according to details shared at the company’s 38th Annual General Meeting.
The milestone marks a shift in how one of India’s largest FMCG players approaches the digital landscape. What began as an experiment with digitally native brands has evolved into a core growth engine, with management signaling that newer businesses could represent a third of India revenue by the end of the decade.
Digital moves into the mainstream
Marico’s India business recorded turnover of Rs 10,348 crore in FY26, growing 28% year-on-year with underlying volume growth of 8%. Against that backdrop, the 20% digital salience figure underscores how rapidly consumer behavior has shifted.
Saugata Gupta, the company’s managing director and chief executive, told shareholders that quick commerce alone reached approximately 5% of the India business, describing the channel as “emerging as a key growth driver.” The executive noted that the digital transformation now extends beyond a handful of digitally native brands and is becoming part of how the broader portfolio reaches consumers.
Foods and Premium Personal Care, which includes the digital-first brands, accounted for roughly 23% of India revenues in FY26. Management indicated that share could climb to around 27% in FY27 and 33% by FY30, a trajectory the company views as structurally important because it reduces dependence on commodity-linked categories and improves margin resilience.
Chairman Harsh Mariwala framed the evolution in strategic terms, saying the company was becoming a “digital-first multinational FMCG enterprise,” with building future-ready digital brands among the key vectors shaping its growth agenda.
Beyond topline growth
The more notable development may be what management says it wants to do next. Marico says its digital-first model is built around data-led decision-making, rapid innovation and agile execution, with an emphasis not just on growth but on profitability and capital efficiency. The company said it is using AI, data and smart analytics to enable faster decision-making, demand forecasting and cost optimisation.
That represents an evolution from the early D2C playbook, where rapid customer acquisition and topline growth often took precedence over profitability. Marico is now explicitly discussing unit economics, capital efficiency and profitable growth alongside scale. In response to a shareholder question about maximising long-term value, the company said its approach included “driving profitable growth in Digital-first brands” alongside scaling Foods and Premium Personal Care.
The company also said it wants to enter adjacent categories only where it has a “clear right to win,” then scale those businesses through disciplined brand building, innovation and execution.
Traditional retail still matters
Marico’s management was careful to frame digital expansion as complementary to, rather than a replacement for, traditional distribution. While digital channels are expanding, the company is simultaneously strengthening its direct reach in general trade through Project SETU, with an ambition to achieve approximately 1.5 times its direct reach by FY27.
The consumer environment now features traditional general trade, e-commerce, D2C and quick commerce increasingly coexisting. Consumers can encounter a brand in a retail outlet, discover it through digital channels, compare alternatives online and complete the purchase through a quick-commerce platform.
That convergence creates a more complicated challenge for brand building. Responding to questions about strengthening brands such as Parachute, Saffola and Livon, Gupta said the increasing number of competitors across offline and online marketplaces makes brand relevance, market share and pricing power critical for sustainable growth.
What comes next
The company’s trajectory suggests the old distinction between traditional FMCG and D2C is becoming less useful. Marico is attempting to bring operating principles associated with digital-native businesses—data, speed, experimentation and agility—into a much larger consumer-brand system.
The real test now is not whether digital-first brands can scale, but whether they can scale profitably, build enduring brands and eventually become as strategically important as the legacy franchises that built Marico in the first place. At Rs 1,100 crore-plus in annualised revenue, the digital-first portfolio is no longer immaterial to the company’s future.
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