Godrej Consumer Products Ltd’s new managing director and chief executive, Aasif Malbari, on Wednesday outlined a strategy to boost the company’s volume and profit growth, three weeks after formally taking charge.
In a call with analysts and investors, Malbari presented a report card of the last five years, characterizing GCPL’s growth as “good but not great”, highlighting that the company’s underlying volume growth and profit after tax grew at a single-digit compound annual growth rate since 2021, when Sudhir Sitapati was first appointed as CEO.
Now, Malbari is planning a number of changes, including a ₹200 crore investment in a new research and development facility, improvements in , a cut in general trade inventory worth ₹125-150 crore over the next three quarters, and a sharpened focus on growing the company’s core portfolio.
GCPL will bring down inventory days in the general trade to 10 days from the current 20 days, Malbari said, adding that new demand-forecasting tools have allowed the company to operate on a leaner, more capital-efficient model.
“I’m making certain tweaks in the [company’s] manifesto,” he said. “The broad direction of the strategy remains the same. We are adding a few elements which we believe will allow us to… get to a better performance going forward.”
New sheriff, new goals
Malbari said GCPL’s core portfolio—soap brands Godrej No.1 and Cinthol, and Good Knight mosquito repellents—has been neglected. “Our core category revenue growth has been actually flattish with profits actually kind of being under pressure,” he said.
“I think… because we had moved on to doing a lot more, we did have to prioritize some of the new entries, and hence our core portfolio did not get the full benefit of what we could do in terms of R&D and innovation on to them. The core has to come to industry-level growth, if not beyond.”
Besides, he said, the company has struggled to translate strategy into execution, which has meant it has missed growth opportunities in large, promising .
“Fragrances are a huge opportunity,” he said. “This is one of the big categories when it comes to 2040. We like the two brands which we acquired. We like the category a lot. We’re really very happy with the potential it offers. We definitely couldn’t have; we didn’t get the execution right when it came to acquiring Park Avenue and integrating it. Over the next few quarters, we will solve for that.”
The vision marks a departure from Sitapati’s earlier growth strategy for GCPL. Among the biggest changes is a shift away from relying on “speedboats” to drive the company’s overall revenue growth. These high-innovation products include Godrej Fab liquid detergent, toilet cleaner brand Spic, mosquito-repellent incense sticks and innovative air fresheners.
On 7 August, Sitapati said these ‘speedboats’ accounted for 15% of the company’s overall revenue in FY26, up from 11% the previous year, and 17% in the June 2026 quarter.
However, the company is doubling down on innovation, and Malbari said he is confident about growth in new categories and adjacencies, including dishwashing soap Rizz, stain remover Zap, and the brand-new category of pet food under Ninja, which will soon expand into cat food.
“So the business, which started in Tamil Nadu, is now scaling in the South, will scale up nationally,” he said, adding that it stood at ₹10 crore ARR (annual run rate). He was referring to GPCL’s business launched in 2025.
“We do feel that we can take the ARR of this business to close to ₹50 crore by the end of this fiscal year, and we do feel committed to scaling this business to a ₹500 crore business, somewhere by FY30.”
Ultimately, Malbari said, the company is committed to being an “outperformer”, which can only mean “double-digit immediate profit” and hitting double-digit underlying volume growth for FY27.
In the June quarter, GCPL reported 19% year-on-year growth in consolidated revenue and 9% underlying volume growth. Over the past five years, however, underlying volume has grown at a 4% CAGR, while consolidated profit after tax has risen just 2% annually.
Seal of approval
Shares of GCPL fell 10% on 11 August when Sitapati informed the exchanges of his resignation with immediate effect.
Analysts have since remained cautiously optimistic on the company’s growth prospects under new management. “The stepping down of Sitapati as MD & CEO came as a shock, after the board approved his reappointment for another five years,” analysts at the brokerage arm of investment bank Nomura wrote in a 13 August note.
“Under him, GCPL underwent a material transformation in its strategy, operations and team. There was a material step-up in innovation, foraying into categories of the future…new communication across its core products… He not only attracted new strong talent/leadership across geographies and functions, but we believe he also attracted a lot of investor interest in the stock when he shared his road map and focus areas for GCPL.”
In a 31 August note following a meeting with the new management, analysts at brokerage firm Emkay said the company aims to significantly improve execution and deliver double-digit volume growth, calling the outlook encouraging.
“Despite the recent unexpected management changes creating near-term uncertainties, we believe GCPL is well positioned to deliver double-digit earnings growth over the medium term (ahead of most peers). We do not change our estimates but lower our multiple by 10% to factor in the added uncertainties from the management changes.”
Shares of the company closed flat on the exchanges on Wednesday, while the benchmark Nifty 50 closed marginally lower. The investor call was held after market hours.