

GRB bets beyond ghee as value-added dairy heats up competition
Subscribe to enjoy similar stories.After building a ₹1,000-crore FMCG business on ghee over four decades, GRB Dairy Foods Pvt. Ltd.
is moving beyond its flagship product as rising competition and the shift to value-added dairy reshape the market.The Bengaluru-based company plans to enter categories such as paneer and other adjacent dairy products by the end of this year, even as it continues to expand its presence in snacks, sweets and spices.The shift underscores a broader challenge for legacy food brands built around a single product: how to stretch beyond a strong core identity without diluting brand recall. For GRB, which was founded in 1984 and whose name is synonymous with ghee, that transition has meant launching new categories under entirely different brands.The plan to diversify its product range comes at a time when dairy staples such as milk, khoya, cheese and ghee have emerged among the most counterfeited products in India’s fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, with reported incidents rising 2.5 times since 2018, according to an Aspa-Crisil report.
At the same time, competition is intensifying as value-added dairy players scale up.Founded in the same year as GRB, Coimbatore-based Milky Mist Dairy Food Ltd has taken a different route, pivoting early to value-added products such as paneer, cheese and yoghurt and has since grown into a ₹2,350-crore company in FY25, more than twice GRB’s roughly ₹1,011 crore revenue. Now preparing for an initial public offering (IPO), Milky Mist’s rise underscores how early bets on diversification and premiumisation are reshaping the competitive landscape, forcing legacy players like GRB to rethink both growth and brand strategy in a fragmented market.“We want consumers to
. Read on livemint.com