As India’s personal care market gets increasingly crowded and legacy fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) firms rush to buy venture capital-backed brands, ITC Ltd is deliberately slowing down and staying guarded on acquisitions, Sameer Satpathy, divisional chief executive of ITC’s personal care products business, told Mint in a conversation.
ITC’s older personal care acquisitions including Savlon, bought in 2015, and Nimyle, bought in 2018, have grown to six to seven times their original size, Satpathy said. Yet unlike listed rivals such as Hindustan Unilever and Marico, ITC is not rushing to buy independent brands that have mushroomed across niches in India’s booming personal care market.
“The headroom to grow in personal care categories is enormous,” Satpathy said. “Some new brands enter categories but not everyone is able to sustain their presence.”
India’s personal care market was last estimated to be worth $21 billion in 2023 and is projected to grow to $34 billion by 2028, according to a report by beauty retailer Nykaa and strategy consulting firm Redseer. The overall market is growing at 10–11% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), while online channels are expanding much faster, at about 25% CAGR.
Selective bets
So far, ITC’s more recent personal care investments have been limited to baby care brand Mother Sparsh, and Mylo, an app offering content and products for expecting and new mothers. ITC acquired a 10% stake for just under ₹40 crore in Mylo in 2022 and has been investing in Mother Sparsh in tranches since 2021. In April last year, it agreed to acquire the balance shares of Mother Sparsh by sometime this year. In total, ITC would have invested ₹126 crore to buy the company.
“When we acquire a brand, the question is—can we give it that time and attention it needs?” Satpathy said. “You also have to be clear why you are buying something. Is it for control, or because the acquired brands are in white spaces with unique strengths in the areas where we may not have adequate bandwidth or the capabilities to do what they [the acquired brand] are doing? We always go for the second strategy.”
ITC was Mother Sparsh’s first and only institutional investor, starting with a Series A round in 2021. The company was founded in 2016.
“We have been clear on why we are entering certain categories,” Satpathy said. “Baby care is a segment that we have looked at and have invested through startups. We feel that baby care is a category which works on extreme trust and to get consumer trials is difficult. So a scaled business here is very valuable as it has a natural moat, in a very high margin category.”
As of FY25, Mother Sparsh reported revenues of just under ₹100 crore, up more than six times from FY21, while its losses for FY25 stood at ₹13.2 crore, according to data sourced from research platform Tracxn.
Peers move faster
ITC’s restrained acquisition strategy stands in sharp contrast to listed rivals such as Marico and Hindustan Unilever, which have been actively investing in or acquiring digital-first brands targeting premium personal care niches.
Marico’s digital brands portfolio has crossed ₹1,000 crore in revenue and is growing at a CAGR of 25%. Among its largest digital-first personal care brands is Beardo, in which Marico first took a stake in 2017 before fully acquiring it in 2020.
The company has since invested in nutraceuticals brand Plix and herbal and ayurvedic cosmetics brand Just Herbs, which crossed ₹100 crore in revenue last year, according to a December 2025 note by brokerage firm Emkay.
“The management maintains its aspirations of doubling revenue in coming five years and becoming a globally recognized digital FMCG company (ranked #2 in India after Honasa),” the note said, referring to the parent firm of D2C pioneer Mamaearth. “This will be aided by actions in new growth engines (20-25% CAGR), which are gradually adopting emerging consumption trends.”
Premium personal care now accounts for 16–17% of Marico’s consolidated sales, a note by JM Financial estimated earlier this month.
Hindustan Unilever, too, has been active, spending just over ₹2,700 crore last year to acquire skincare brand Minimalist in an all-cash deal—one of the largest exits for founders of an independent Indian brand.
In core categories such as soaps, Hindustan Unilever remains the market leader, with Wipro Consumer Care and Godrej Consumer Products also commanding significant share. ITC’s Fiama remains a relatively smaller player in the soaps segment, highlighting its limited scale in mass personal care, even as it ranks second in the shower gels market, the company said in its 2023 investor day presentation.
One of ITC’s largest personal care brands, Savlon, is estimated at about ₹1,000 crore in consumer spends, while Engage ranks second in the fragrances market, behind Vini Cosmetics’ Fogg.
ITC’s cautious stance in personal care is in sharp contrast to its own food division, which has been on an acquisition spree. Last year alone, ITC bought stakes in meat brands Prasuma and Meatigo and acquired organic staples brand 24 Mantra for ₹472.5 crore.
Chasing value
Satpathy said ITC’s conservative approach has not held back scale in online channels. E-commerce platforms now contribute 25% of the personal care division’s total sales, while premium brands account for about 43–44% of the portfolio by value.
“We now have two distinct levers of growth—top of the pyramid and the bottom of the pyramid,” he said. “With recent reduction in GST rates, a far-sighted reform by the government, both engines should now fire.”
ITC’s stock has come under pressure since the government announced an additional excise duty on cigarettes, on top of the existing 40% GST, effective 1 February. The stock is down more than 20% over the past month, with analysts expecting the company to pass on the higher tax burden to consumers.
ITC’s FMCG (Others) business—which includes food and personal care—reported revenues of ₹11,859.56 crore in the first half of FY26 and ₹22,015.12 crore in FY25. By comparison, Marico reported revenues of over ₹6,700 crore in the first half of FY26, while Hindustan Unilever’s revenues stood at ₹33,103 crore over the same period.
Despite the shock to its cigarette business, ITC’s other FMCG segments have yet to drive the bulk of its valuation, with food contributing more value than personal care. In a note earlier this month, J.P. Morgan’s equities brokerage arm assigned a 6x EV/sales multiple to ITC’s Other FMCG business, “broadly in line with the multiples of other food peers.” The brokerage values ITC’s cigarette business at 11x EV/Ebitda, paper and packaging at 15x, and agriculture at 10x.