Washing liquids, ready-to-cook mixes among fastest growing categories : Kantar Report

Barring cornflakes, breakfast cereals led by muesli, porridge, and oats have seen growth in over 1.5 times.

Washing liquids has emerged as the fastest growing category, more than doubling in terms of volumes, in the last two fiscal years. Reflecting the consumers’ growing need for speed along with freshness, ready-to-cook mixes also doubled its volumes during this period. Rise of premiumisation and shoppers gravitating towards larger packs, indicates moderate to strong growth is expected to be seen in the urban FMCG segment over the next few quarters, Kantar’s latest FMCG Pulse report stated.

As per data released by the research and insights firm, washing liquids is the fastest growing category in FY25. It grew at 2.7x and has added close to 24 new million households since FY23. “Currently having a penetration, slightly above 20 per cent, the category has massive headroom to grow. Operating in the same fabric care sector is washing soaps, which is steadily losing relevance as shoppers move to products that leave lesser mess to clean up after. Fabric care is perhaps one category that is seeing a major behaviour upheaval, as more shoppers adopt more of liquid products,” the report noted.

Ready-to-cook mixes is the only other category to have doubled its volumes in the past two years, adding as many as 18 million households, primarily driven by batters. In comparison, ready-to-cook curries added just about 6 lakh new households during this period. “Clearly, consumers want speed but also freshness and partial control over their meals, and that is driving these diverse behaviours within the same space,” the report added.

Barring cornflakes, breakfast cereals led by muesli, porridge, and oats (MOP) have seen growth in over 1.5 times in the last two years. Stating that the cornflakes category, which lacks “health connotation” has seen “volume losses”, the report attributed the “premiumisation” wave led by affluent Indian consumers as the key reason.

Urban recovery

Indian household’s shopping trips were seen stabilising to 156 per year in FY25. At the same time, the average pack size across categories grew around 16 gms in FY25 over FY24 across categories. “It indicates confidence returning to the shoppers. In addition to this, premiumization too continues….. which leads us to believe that we would see moderate to strong growth in urban FMCG building up in the next quarters. If the macroeconomic factors remain favourable, we should also see rural recovering as we head into the second half of the year,” Kantar stated in its report.

Published on June 9, 2025