CCL Products looks beyond coffee to emerge as food and beverge FMCG player
CCL Products (India) Ltd, the country’s largest coffee exporter, is now preparing for its most ambitious transformation yet, evolving beyond coffee into a diversified food and beverage FMCG company. CCL, which sells coffees in the domestic market under brands such as Continental and Malgudi through a distribution network of around 1.5 lakh outlets, is diversifying its product portfolio including products such as tea and snacks.
The company recently launched South Indian snacks under the Malgudi brand. Malgudi began with filter coffee and is now being extended into traditional snacks such as chegodis, muruku, ribbon pakodis and soon, banana chips. The focus is currently on South India, where the brand has natural equity, before expanding nationwide with these snacks, said Praveen Jaipuriar, CEO, CCL Products.
Similarly, CCL had began experimenting with iced tea this summer under its premix brand ‘This,’ especially targeting North India, where coffee consumption is more seasonal. The idea is to leverage existing capabilities such as its institutional vending supply chain, which already includes tea, to build relevant niche offerings in retail, Jaipuriar added.
CCL’s coffee vending business itself has grown into a sizeable vertical of ₹30-40 crore, with the companies supplying machines and premixes to offices, hospitals, educational institutions and even IPL venues.
Practical realisation
CCL’s push towards diversification is driven by a practical realisation — expanding deeper into India’s retail landscape requires more throughput per outlet. Coffee alone cannot support the economics of distribution when entering smaller shops. “If we have to grow our presence from 1.5 lakh outlets to 2.5 or 3 lakh, we need more categories that complement coffee and strengthen the business model,” Jaipuriar said.
The company started experimenting with the cafe model in Hyderabad last year. “I don’t think we have found a big sweet spot there. We’re still experimenting, seeing what model could work, because that’s a tough category,” Jaipuriar said. For now, CCL is focussed on aggressively growing the core coffee business while nurturing new FMCG categories that can take off in the next 2-3 years. “Non-coffee revenues remain below 1% today, but the company believes these seeds will grow into strong revenue engines as scale builds,” Jaipuriar said.
For the first half of current fiscal, CCL reported 19 per cent growth in net profits at ₹173 crore, while its revenues were up 44.5 per cent at ₹2,186 crore. Domestic market accounted for revenues of ₹310-odd crores in the first half, of which ₹210 crore came from the branded business. CCL manufactures coffees for bulk and private labels in the B2B category.
Published on December 12, 2025
