After more than three decades of building consumer businesses, Sunil Kataria is applying the same discipline to one of India’s most diversified agribusinesses. His diagnosis: too much dependency on a single crop, geography or business.
His prescription: build multiple growth engines, move closer to customers and create more value beyond the farm gate. In his first media interview since taking over as Managing Director & CEO of Godrej Agrovet, Kataria explains the thinking behind one of the company’s biggest strategic transformations.
Q. Godrej Agrovet crossed ₹10,000 crore in revenue for the first time in FY26. Beyond the numbers, what strategic changes have you initiated since taking charge?
Kataria: Financially, FY26 was a good year. Revenue crossed ₹10,000 crore for the first time, profit before tax excluding exceptional items grew 17 per cent to ₹569 crore and return on capital employed improved from 16 per cent to 20 per cent.
But the bigger change is how we think about growth. Across foods, dairy, animal nutrition, crop care and oil palm, every business now starts with one question: what does the customer want? Once you begin there instead of with the commodity, investment decisions, innovation and go-to-market strategies all start looking different. That shift from being commodity -ed to becoming genuinely market-facing is the foundation of everything else we are doing.
Q. What organisational changes are needed to make that happen?
Kataria: There are three pillars. First, every business has to become genuinely market-facing, with the consumer at the centre of decision-making.
Second, we are strengthening go-to-market capabilities, but each business needs a different model. Foods and dairy require FMCG-style distribution. Animal nutrition is advisory-led because farmers are looking for healthier livestock and higher productivity, not simply another bag of feed. Crop care sits somewhere in between.
Third, we identified several single points of failure. In some businesses we depended too much on one crop, in others one geography or one customer segment. Our objective is to convert those into multiple engines of growth over the next five to six years.
Q. Can you give us examples?
Kataria: Crop care is a good example. Nearly 45 per cent of that business has historically depended on cotton herbicides, making it vulnerable to one crop cycle. We want to become a broader crop-care company serving seven or eight major crop segments across herbicides, fungicides and insecticides. Products such as Ashitaka in maize and Takai across multiple crops are part of that diversification. Animal nutrition is another example. Our dairy feed business has traditionally been concentrated in Maharashtra. We are expanding into Karnataka, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh because reducing geographic dependence also builds resilience.
Q. You have deliberately stopped referring to the business as animal feed and instead call it animal nutrition. Why?
Kataria: Because we are not in the business of selling feed. We are in the business of improving livestock productivity. That changes the products we develop, the way we engage with farmers and the value we create. We are investing across both the mass-market and premium nutrition while strengthening our technical service teams. If farmers are to adopt premium products, you cannot simply sell through distribution. You need to understand their livestock, diagnose problems and recommend solutions. It becomes an advisory relationship rather than a selling relationship.
Q. Dairy and foods appear to be converging around a common strategy. Where do you see the biggest opportunity?
Kataria: India remains significantly under-penetrated in protein consumption, creating a long runway for growth.
We already have strong platforms in poultry and dairy, the country’s two most accessible protein sources. The opportunity is to create more value through branded, value-added products.
In dairy, categories such as curd, paneer and milk-based beverages offer stronger opportunities than liquid milk. Under the Godrej Jersey brand, our immediate priority is to deepen our presence in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana before expanding further. Across foods, we are building a broader protein portfolio through processed poultry and frozen foods to strengthen direct consumer relationships.
Q. The decision to taper down live bird trading is a significant strategic shift. What is the thinking behind it?
Kataria: Live bird trading is essentially a commodity business. Margins are thin, earnings are volatile and it doesn’t fit the direction we want to take. Our farms remain a strategic advantage, but increasingly as the supply backbone for branded products such as Real Good Chicken and Yummiez. Controlling quality, freshness and traceability becomes a competitive advantage. The business evolves from commodity trading into an integrated branded food platform.
Q. Oil palm delivered a strong performance in FY26. What is the next phase?
Kataria: Oil palm is one of our most exciting businesses because it combines long-term value creation from plantations to downstream value-added products.
Nearly half our plantations are still in the juvenile stage, so production growth is already embedded for several years. The next step is downstream integration. Our specialty fats refinery in Andhra Pradesh is expected to become operational shortly. Once fully ramped up, it will allow us to supply higher-value specialty fats to the food industry, completing the value chain from cultivation to processing.
We are also expanding into the Northeast. The philosophy remains the same—reduce geographic concentration, build multiple growth engines and create more value beyond the farm gate.