BACKBENCHER TO FRONT RUNNER

FROM BEING A DISJOINTED FMCG COMPANY IN 2020, WITH A PRESENCE ONLY IN TEA AND SALT AND ITS READY-TO-DRINK PORTFOLIO A NON-PERFORMER, THE LAST FIVE YEARS HAVE SEEN TATA'S CONSUMER BUSINESS EMERGE AS A STRONG FOOD AND BEVERAGES CONTENDER ON THE BACK OF ACQUISITIONS, A REJIG OF ITS DISTRIBUTION NETWORK, AND A PIPELINE OF INNOVATIONS.

- By Ajita Shashidhar

WHEN N. CHANDRASEKARAN took over as the chairman of the Tata group in 2017, he had penned down a few priorities on a large whiteboard that stretched across his office at the iconic Bombay House. Topmost on his rather long priority list was to strengthen the group's not-so-strong consumer-focussed businesses. After all, India is a consumption economy and for a mammoth like the Tata group, not having a strong consumer-focussed FMCG business was indeed worrisome for the then new chairman, popularly known as Chandra.

The FMCG business was disjointed: though its branded tea business, which catered to both India and the world, was under Tata Global Beverages Ltd (TGBL), the latter was perceived as a plantations company, despite having exited that business; Tata Salt and the staples business Sampann were under Tata Chemicals; then there was NourishCo—a 50:50 joint venture with PepsiCo—housed under TGBL, under which were its ready-to-drink brands. Calling TGBL complex was an understatement—it had 45 legal entities under it. Tata Coffee, the listed B2B business, was also a subsidiary.

Chandra’s first move was to consolidate the group's scattered FMCG businesses. He pulled out Tata Salt and Sampann from Tata Chemicals and put them along with the beverages business. “The first time I saw Tata Consumer Products (TCPL) was on Chandra’s whiteboard in 2017,” recalls Ajit Krishnakumar, ED & COO, TCPL. Krishnakumar was then at Bombay House, and in-charge of strategy and M&A. “Chandra’s top priority was to create this consumer business. It took us a year. My big role was to take Tata Salt and Sampann out of Chemicals and create TCPL. The formation of the company was announced in May 2019, and TCPL formally came into being in February 2020,” he adds.