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Packaged consumer goods maker Dabur India has said in a quarterly business update that rural volume growth continued to outpace that of urban in the December ’24 quarter. The maker of Vatika shampoo and Real juices said this will be the fourth consecutive quarter when rural markets have grown faster than cities across the FMCG sector.
In the July-September quarter, demand in India’s hinterland continued to outpace that of cities, growing twice as fast as urban markets, driven by food staples and recovery of mid-sized companies, NielsenIQ said in its quarterly FMCG update in November. While urban demand was up 2.8%, demand in rural India grew 6%, against 5.2% in the April-June quarter. Overall, riding on rural demand, India’s fast moving consumer goods grew 5.7% by value and 4.1% by volume in the quarter. Price-led growth stood at 1.5 per cent.
Revival of rural demand cannot though offset the shortfall in urban mass spending. For FMCG bellwether Hindustan Unilever, smaller towns and villages make up only a third of its sales. However, with narrowing of the rural-urban consumption gap, as recent data shows, these companies may find rural sector emerging as a bolster in course of time. There are ample signs of evolution of rural consumption as it moves away from basic necessities.
The shift away
