Emami plans to make acquisitions account for a quarter of its business by FY30

Emami Ltd is doubling down on its acquisition-led growth strategy, with the FMCG major expecting its strategic investments to contribute nearly a quarter of its consolidated turnover by FY2030 as it seeks to transform itself from a traditional fast-moving consumer goods company into a platform for scaling founder-led consumer brands.

“Strategic investments currently contribute around 6% of our consolidated turnover, and we expect this to scale roughly seven-fold to approximately 25% by FY30, emerging as a meaningful growth driver within Emami’s portfolio,” vice chairman and managing director Harsha V. Agarwal said in the company’s Integrated Annual Report for FY2025-26.

The statement marks one of the clearest articulations yet of Emami’s long-term strategy to supplement organic growth through acquisitions in high-growth consumer segments.

Building a consumer brand platform

Rather than pursuing acquisitions as standalone financial investments, Emami said it aims to leverage its manufacturing capabilities, nationwide distribution network and brand-building expertise to help scale promising founder-led businesses.

“The thesis is straightforward,” Agarwal said. “Founder-led D2C brands are exceptional at consumer insight and product innovation, but sustained scale requires omnichannel reach such as general trade, modern trade and quick commerce working in tandem. That is precisely Emami’s structural advantage.”

He added that the company sees itself as “a consolidator of choice for India’s most promising founder-led consumer brands, at a time when many of them need patient capital and distribution muscle far more than another round of venture funding.”

According to the report, Emami enters this phase of expansion from a position of financial strength, backed by “consistent profitability, strong cash generation and a debt-free balance sheet.”

Recent acquisitions signal direction

The company highlighted that its acquisition strategy has already begun taking shape through investments made over the last few years.

It noted that stakes in The Man Company and Brillare marked the beginning of a dedicated investment engine focused on new-age consumer businesses.

During FY26, the company initiated investments that culminated in early FY27 with the addition of Axiom, giving Emami an entry into the health and wellness beverages segment, and the acquisition of a majority stake in IncNut, the parent of personalised beauty and wellness brands Vedix and SkinKraft.

“These are not opportunistic bets. They follow a defined roadmap, with our forward inorganic focus centred on Gen Z consumption patterns that offer structurally higher growth than the FMCG category average,” Agarwal said.

To support this strategy, Emami has also established a dedicated new-age business vertical in Gurugram that will focus on identifying, evaluating, investing in and scaling emerging consumer brands.

Strategy extends beyond acquisitions

The acquisition strategy forms one pillar of a broader transformation underway at Emami.

The company identified three strategic priorities driving its future growth — premiumising its existing brands, building digital capabilities across the organisation and creating the next generation of growth engines through investments in emerging consumer businesses.

“Our core brands, our digital capability and our new-age portfolio are not three separate bets — they are one portfolio, deliberately constructed to be broader, less seasonal and less dependent on any single category than it was a few years ago,” Agarwal said.

The report also stresses Emami’s push towards artificial intelligence, with the company integrating AI across sales execution, supply chain, analytics, marketing, finance and human resources.

“Our vision is… not a company running isolated AI initiatives, but a genuinely new-age enterprise where intelligence is woven into the way every function thinks and works,” Agarwal said.

Business mix becoming less seasonal

The strategy is already beginning to reshape Emami’s business mix.

According to the report, the company’s new-age and mainstream portfolio now contributes 21% of its domestic business, up from 7% in FY20.

Its non-seasonal portfolio has expanded to 56% of domestic business from 50% in FY20, while the contribution from organised and new-age channels has nearly tripled to 32%, compared with 11% six years ago.

Digital commerce is also emerging as a significant growth driver, with e-commerce now accounting for around 14% of domestic revenue and quick commerce sales having tripled during FY26.

Despite headwinds during FY26, including a weak summer season, GST-related trade disruption and geopolitical tensions affecting international operations, Emami maintained that the structural changes undertaken over the past few years have strengthened the resilience of its business.

“FY26 tested this Company. It confirmed what we already believed about it. We enter the next phase of growth with a stronger foundation, a more resilient portfolio, and a clear, disciplined path to becoming India’s platform of choice for the next generation of consumer brands,” Agarwal said.