Vineet Agrawal, CEO, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting and MD, Wipro Enterprises
New Delhi
Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting has garnered revenues of about ₹10,625 crore in FY25, up 3.4 per cent over FY24 with India business’ contribution at 50 per cent.The company’s domestic business garnered a volume growth of 7.8 per cent ahead of industry growth rates with brands like Yardley and Softouch witnessing strong growth. In an interaction with businessline, Vineet Agrawal, CEO, Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting and MD, Wipro Enterprises, said the company is seeing improvement in urban demand trends and remains open for future acquisitions.
Edited Excerpts:
The past fiscal has been challenging for the consumer products industry. How has FY25 been for Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting ?
It was indeed a challenging year largely because demand was relatively muted for the industry due to higher raw material costs. But fortunately, we did well. India business recorded a volume growth of 7.8 per cent ,which is clearly ahead of the industry growth rate. The premium portfolio and even the economy portfolio performed well. So from the premium portfolio perspective, Yardley did well and is now almost a ₹300 crore brand. Softouch fabric conditioner has also grown to ₹300 crore. Our hand wash portfolio is now trending at ₹200 crore. We also did well in the spices and food portfolio. For instance, Brahmins grew by about 20 per cent in FY25. So, it was only in the mass or the popular portfolio, where Santoor sits, where the growth was muted. In terms of consolidated revenues, broadly we did about ₹10,625 crore. Nearly 50 per cent of our business comes from India.
Are you witnessing an uptick in urban demand in recent months ? What will be the key growth drivers going forward ?
From December onwards, we have begun seeing improvement in urban demand. But rural growth continues to be better than urban. With inflation being relatively controlled and good monsoons, we are hopeful that there will be further improvement in overall demand trends. We also expect that even our mass or popular brands portfolio will do well. We expect a broad based growth across segments. In the last three years, volume growth CAGR is at 7.2 per cent, which is amongst the highest in the industry and in FY25 it was 7.8 per cent. So, we expect to continue to grow faster than the industry growth rates.
How was the performance of your international business ? What will be your inorganic growth strategy going forward ?
The international business was a mixed bag. South African business has done very well for us and has grown two and a half times in the last five years. The West Asia and Indonesia businesses also did well. The challenge was in China. But the other territories did reasonably well.
Our acquisition strategy has been focused on personal care and homecare whether its in India or in other developing markets and we will continue to focus on that. In India, we are also open for acquisitions in the food segment. From an acquisitions perspective, in the past 20 years we have invested nearly a billion dollars and we have a reasonable amount of depth of money to invest further. We do not have any debt on our books and our working capital is relatively lower and so we have the ability to continue to do acquisitions.
How are e-commerce and quick commerce channels evolving for your portfolio ?
E-Commerce does play a critical role especially for the premium portfolio. For brands such as Yardley, Softouch and Giffy, the contribution goes up to as much as 10 per cent. Quick commerce’s share is typically about 38 per cent of the overall e-commerce contribution . But for brands like Santoor, general trade remains a key channel. We clearly believe we need to protect general trade and we can’t have a pricing strategy which disrupts general trade. This is something we have managed well and we will continue to do so.
Have you seen any impact on international operations due to macroeconomic factors such as tariffs ?
We have 17 manufacturing plants outside India and we are manufacturing in the markets where we are present. But tariff structures can impact demand and we believe that is happening in China. Uncertainty is never good for business so, it is a key monitorable. But from a manufacturing perspective, our ability to handle supply chains is not impacted.
The venture capital arm of Wipro consumers has now made 15 investments in start-ups. Do you remain bullish on this business ?
Yes, we remain bullish. We have done three investments in the past three months. I believe the start-up industry is bringing a lot of innovations to the market. Besides focusing on the top line, start-ups founders have realised that it is also important to now focus on profitability which is a good change.
Published on July 8, 2025