FMCG companies to drive focus on middle India: Nielsen

NEW DELHI: Middle and rural India will drive business strategies of fast moving consumer goods companies over the next few quarters as smaller towns and cities help push demand for packaged consumer goods, market researcher Nielsen said in its fifth FMCG forecast on Friday. Though some said metros remain important because of the contribution and the presence of competition, but very clearly middle and rural India will be high focus from the planner’s and executor’s stand point,” said Sameer Shukla, executive director, retail intelligence, South Asia, Nielsen Global Connect. Shukla said given the favourable monsoon this year, along with the government’s push on agrarian reforms to tide over the economic impact of the lockdown, FMCG companies are likely to draw better growth from middle and rural India at least for another few months. "This clearly tells us that shoppers are not buying more frequently but buying a lot more in that same frequency which means that there has to be shift of consumption which was offline and is now moving towards online purchases and hence the habit is created more,” said Kunal Gupta, lead, consumer intelligence, South Asia, Nielsen Global Connect.