Insurgent consumer brands in India have emerged as a significant force in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) sector, collectively generating more than $7.5 billion in revenue in FY25 and growing 3.75 times over the last five years, according to a joint report by Bain & Company and DSG Consumer Partners.
These brands are growing 1.5 to 5 times their respective categories and are building new segments at breakneck speed, said the fourth edition of the ‘Game Changers 2026: India Insurgent Brand Report’.
“Over the past five years, insurgent brands have outpaced market growth 3.3 times. This is not an anomaly, it’s a consistent, cross-category pattern,” said the report.
The findings are based on a study of over 200 insurgent brands across consumer categories such as food and beverage, beauty and personal care, apparel and lifestyle, home and kitchen, jewellery, travel and hospitality.
The study found that disruption is occurring across categories, led by jewellery brands, which recorded a growth of nearly 6.5 times, followed by beauty and personal care at 6 times, and home and kitchen, as well as wearable electronics at 4.5-5 times.
“Consumer insurgents continue to significantly outpace the broader market. While they still account for less than 2 per cent of most categories (with the exception of beauty & personal care), they are growing much faster than the category average,” DSG Consumer Partners India Managing Director and Head Hariharan Premkumar said.
The latest Insurgex Index, which tracks high-growth and capital-efficient insurgent brands, expanded to 39 brands in FY25 from 29 a year earlier, with 19 new entrants generating a combined $600 million in revenue.
The report observed that insurgent brands are increasingly reshaping consumer markets by identifying underserved needs, creating new consumption occasions, accelerating adoption of emerging formats and expanding niche segments into mainstream categories.
Bain & Company Partner Rohit Shankar said insurgent brands have fundamentally changed how consumer categories are built and scaled in India.
“They are winning by focusing on emerging or latent consumer needs, building mastery in media and channel deployment, and high velocity innovation. These capabilities have enabled insurgents not only to disrupt established categories and take share from incumbents, but also to create entirely new growth pools,” he said.
The report highlighted the growing importance of digital commerce and quick commerce in enabling insurgent brands to scale rapidly by developing technology-led capabilities across pricing, platform-specific product architecture and growth hacking.
Despite the sector’s rapid expansion, the report noted that sustained scale remains difficult. Less than one per cent of consumer companies founded since 2008 have crossed ₹100 crore in revenue, while only 22 per cent of insurgent brands with revenue above ₹100 crore have progressed to exceed ₹500 crore.