Food business growing at around 20%, says Dabur's Amit Burman

Both demonetisation and GST have been disruptions. Demonetisation took about three months for the market to come back. People have the new money to go and buy products now. GST as such is also been disruption. What happened was that the trade was not ready for it. However, after one year, it has streamlined and we are seeing good growth coming from rural. We have good growth coming from cash-and-carry, from traditional channel, from modern trade and you can see all the other multinational corporations also reporting those kind of numbers. So it's settled down.

Both are coming back to normal. Wholesale, particularly is taking a little bit longer, but it's coming back.

I see that happening. As I said, at least for us because of distribution, expansion and election year. We have also done a lot with doctors. We have now almost 50,000 ayurvedic centers all around the country, which is actually giving a lot of advice to farmers and we have all what ayurvedic products to sell. So, we are doing a lot of stuff behind the scenes to create the demand, to market it. Everything is not to be marketed on television. There are certain things, touch points, which you have in the market, which is reviving the demand.

As I said, we are growing at around 20% on the food business. I think, we can penetrate much more. While the rural areas still have a lot of headroom there, which we can penetrate. Also to convert drink or nectar users into juice is also something which we are doing.

Of course, it can. Our focus area will always be in the ayurveda healthcare and that is where our roots are, that is where most of our knowledge is based out of. However, yes, foods and beverages, the way the eating habits are going, people are getting more health conscious, people are moving from aerated drinks into more juices.

I would say at least more than five-seven years.

It could happen.

We really need to get a good acquisition in India. We have been looking around for it. We have got almost Rs 2,000 crore kitty lying with us, plus, of course money we can take from the banks as we have zero debt. So we are ready to do it, but I think we have to get the right product, right brand to do.

I think because our focus has been healthcare, we would look at smaller brands in the healthcare, which have become brands in maybe in a small geography. But we don't have the money to expand and bring it into our portfolio. We can distribute it around the whole country much better than anybody else can, because we have that distribution. That is the kind of brand we are looking at.

I think the ayurveda phase is definitely there. I think our competition has done a good job in increasing that pie. We have the backing of science behind ayurveda and we have a lot of new products, which are coming out in ayurveda. So, yes, ayurveda wave is on and we are right there in innovation, in getting the science behind ayurveda and launch new products.

I do not think I will comment on the Patanjali wave as such, but all I can say is, when the competitors were there, we lost some share in honey, we lost some share in chyawanprash – we are back to where we were. So, the market has started growing because of them, but our market shares have come back. So, I think we will get maximum to gain out of the whole thing, going forward 2019.

We could have definitely done more in terms of promoting ayurveda in terms of bringing it more urban. However, in every category some disruption happens and then the category grows. We have seen it in the mobile industry, and airline industry. So these things happen and we all want to be ready for it, but sometimes it's not easy to be there.

Yes, I definitely believe that.