We are going through an interesting phase in the FMCG sector. One side is volume growth which is pretty impressive actually and on the other side is raw material pressure. Where is it going?
Logically both volume growth and margin growth will not sustain. One of them will have to give way to the other. Over the past two decades, this growth margin axis has been playing out in FMCG companies and I can see them sacrificing margins for growth in the current scenario.
There are several reasons for that but I feel that once we discount the post Covid upsurge in consumption, they will have to find ways of sustaining the volume growth. So, I feel pricing by consumer companies may be more benign. Companies will give more trade push just to sustain the volumes. Inflation is a serious concern but at the same time, the Covid period has also given FMCG companies a strong base through several cost cutting measures. The rationalisation of the advertising and sales promotion expenditure may hav
Mumbai: Erosion of about Rs 4,000 crore of market cap of the
UPL stock in the wake of a whistle-blower complaint yet again underscored the significance of serious whistle-blowers in India Inc. An analysis by the ET Intelligence Group has revealed a 17 per cent increase in whistle-blower complaints received by Nifty-50 companies in 2019-20, with 19 member companies cumulatively disclosing a record number of 5,307 complaints.
Just three companies accounted for 70 per cent of these complaints, with IT firm
Wipro topping the list, closely followed by the country’s largest lender, State Bank of India, and another leading IT company Tech Mahindra.
To be sure, most of these complaints tended to be of a non-serious nature. For instance, as per Wipro’s annual report, the top categories of complaints were workplace concerns and harassment (34 per cent), and people processes (32 per cent). Most of the cases (82 per cent) were resolved through engagement of human resources or mediation