- Musings From Deepak @ DSG Consumer Partners
- Posts
- Deepak's Musings #134: What does 2024 have in store for us?
Deepak's Musings #134: What does 2024 have in store for us?
India is hot, investors are deploying capital but valuations in the short term are stretched
Deepak Shahdadpuri
January 23, 2024
All things consumer & insurgent brands. What I am currently reading, thinking about, and reflecting upon. You can follow me on Twitter at @dishahdadpuri or follow DSG Consumer Partners at @dsgcp.
This is the first newsletter for 2024. It has been a manic start to the year with me on the road since 4 January 2024, as DSGCP raises its first-ever INR fund giving Indian resident investors access to a portfolio of growth-stage high-growth consumer brands. In the last 2 weeks, I have visited and met with investors in Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Baroda, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Udaipur and Delhi. In the next 10 days, I will be visiting Pune, Kolkata and Bangalore. And I still have a few more cities to do. India is booming! In every city I see construction. I see organised retail. I see consumers eating out and splurging. The next 20 years will be the time when the Indian consumer comes of age.
I am excited to see what 2024 has planned for us.
p.s. You can click on any of the summary links to read the full article from its source.
Tata acquires two fast-growing consumer brands
I last met Punit Gupta, head of Tata Consumer M&A, in the summer of 2023, and it was clear that Tata Consumer had big plans to step up their presence in the CPG category. They had recently acquired Soulfull and Punit described how they had integrated the business and were quickly leveraging Tata’s distribution prowess to expand channels. The 2 acquisitions last week of Ching’s and Orgainc India, are much larger.
DSGCP has been investing in CPG brands for over a decade. Indians are getting wealthier and will be spending more on discretionaries. These are long-term tailwinds and entrepreneurs building CPG brands and going to see explosive growth.
Wipro Consumer backs The Baker’s Dozen
Our friends at Wipro Consumer VC continue to increase their exposure to the packaged food category, this time partnering with bakery brand The Baker’s Dozen.
The ongoing debate on healthier ultra-processed foods?
Healthier ultra-processed foods? Just Food’s US columnist Victor Martino sets out why he believes there will be a paradigm shift in the approach to healthier foods. Victor makes the case that the new paradigm is the production and marketing of healthier packaged food products across the board, including healthier ultra-processed foods.
On the same topic, we have this from the Wall Street Journal.
The number of"affluent" Indians—those with an annual income of $10,000 (around ₹8.3 lakh) or more—has grown nearly 12 times faster than the overall population in four years starting 2019-20, according to a Goldman Sachs report. The report emphasises that premium category players in various sectors are growing faster than their non-premium peers.
This is, and has been, a core part of DSGCP’s investment strategy since launch.
Categories which benefit from rising Affuent India
Can India be a US$40 Trillion economy by 2050?
Interesting post from Alibaba’s Madhur Deep. He makes a compelling case.
Chaitanya Rathi has had a long-standing relationship with DSG Consumer Partners and its portfolio companies. I got to know CR when he first joined Sula Vineyards in the CEO’s office. He subsequently was recruited as COO at merchant aggregator Mswipe before leaving to do his MBA at INSEAD after which he joined me at DSGCP to help manage Fund I and deploy Fund II. He left in 2019 to become COO at Sula Vineyards and worked closely with Rajeev Samant to the very successful IPO in Dec 2022. He is a fantastic addition to the consumer venture ecosystem in his new role at Sharrp.
The current state of India’s QSR market
Although The Ken’s story is Domino’s centric, it is also a fantastic snapshot of the the state of the broader Indian QSR market and what the future may hold.
Reply