Industry Odisha Bureau, Oct 28: New-age consumer brands are winning real shelf space in India’s kirana market. They now hold 21.7% of the measured market, up from 14.8% a year earlier. Legacy fast-moving consumer goods companies saw their share slip to 78.3% from 85.2%. Retail intelligence platform Bizom, which tracks 10 million kiranas, shared the data with Economic Times.
The gain equals 6.9 percentage points, comparing the first halves of FY26 and FY27. That is not the same as a 6.9% rise. Legacy players still control nearly four-fifths of this channel. Yet the shift matters because kiranas remain the backbone of consumer goods distribution. Zydus Wellness chief executive Tarun Arora called it a rare chance to reshape market structure.
Many of these brands began online, selling directly to consumers. Moving into physical stores widens their reach to households that shop locally. It also offers product discovery and steadier repeat purchases. Plum Goodness, a digital-first beauty brand, now earns 30% of revenue offline. It has about 35,000 physical touchpoints, not all of them kiranas. Going offline demands a new operating model, not just another sales channel.
Changing consumer tastes are driving this shift. Plum chief executive Shankar Prasad said these preferences show up first online, then offline. Shoppers increasingly seek science-led, performance-focused and clinical products, he said. Retailers once wary of pricier goods grew confident as customers asked for them. That, Prasad said, shifted shelf allocation over the past two to three years. Many startups target urban premium buyers and launch products quickly, accepting some failures. Still, premiumisation is not uniform across income groups or categories.
Staying on shelves is the harder test. Parth Sethi, growth officer at Bizom, said sustaining wide physical distribution is the real challenge. Incumbents enjoy deep offline reach built over decades. Arora said higher retailer margins alone cannot secure shelf space. Initial trials, he added, do not guarantee lasting market share. General trade also demands distributors, frequent replenishment, working capital and logistics spending. Wider availability does not automatically mean a profitable network.
The September quarter offered clues on geography. D2C brands expanded their kirana footprint by 200 basis points across urban and rural markets. Established brands lost 1.9% of urban kirana outlets but added 2.3% in rural areas. Legacy companies thus appear to be defending their rural strongholds.
Large FMCG groups retain powerful advantages in scale, manufacturing and retailer ties. Many have also chosen to buy promising challengers. Hindustan Unilever, Marico, Godrej Consumer and ITC have acquired several new-age brands. These include Minimalist, Oziva, Beardo, Yoga Bar, Mother Sparsh, Plix and True Elements. Cosmix and 4700BC have also moved under larger company ownership. Bizom’s data excludes several such acquired brands. So the true reach of new-age products may be even wider, Sethi said.
The question now is durability. Can digital-first brands turn shelf presence into national scale and profit? Or will legacy giants’ money and networks keep them on top? For now, India’s consumer goods race looks more open.
