Wipro Consumer Care forays into food segment

Wipro Consumer Care's latest acquisition Nirapara’s product portfolio recorded an annual revenue of around Rs 100 crore in FY21-22

Wipro Consumer Care and Lighting on Monday forayed into the food segment by acquiring packaged food and spices brand Nirapara. The Kerala-based spices brand, which was not functional in the last six months and saw poor business in the last three years owing to floods in the state and the Covid-19 pandemic, has been in existence since 1976 and is widely known in the south-Indian state’s households for its blended spices like the Sambar powder and Chicken Masala.

Wipro is expecting to resume Nirapara’s operations in about one-and-half months’ time.

With this, the FMCG company, which also owns top soap brand Santoor and grooming products maker Yardley, will be fighting for a share in India’s spices and ready-to-cook market that is estimated to be worth approximately Rs 75,000 crore.

“It (spices and ready-to-cook product segment) is, as they call, a ‘centre of the plate phenomenon’. It’s not a peripheral product. These are not additives to the food that you are eating,” said Wipro Consumer Care’s chief executive officer Vineet Agrawal, in a press conference.

Since this is the company’s first venture in the food space, the valuation of the deal has not been agreed upon. It is, however, expected to be less than twice the turnover Nirapara makes under Wipro’s ownership after 12 months of operations and will be calculated at the end of the period, said Agrawal.

Nirapara’s product portfolio recorded an annual revenue of around Rs 100 crore in FY21-22.

Wipro Consumer Care is looking for more acquisitions in the food segment and will be keen to take up regionally dominant brands like Nirapara, which it claims is Kerala’s second-largest spice brand.

Post the acquisition, Wipro will be upgrading the manufacturing facilities and building up quality testing of their products, said Anil Chugh, president of Food Business at Wipro Consumer Care. “We are also setting up a big R&D base in Bengaluru for our food business,” Chugh added.