Tata Consumer Products Ltd (TCPL) is strengthening its play in the e-commerce space besides scaling up traditional distribution network, Chairman N Chandrasekaran told shareholders at the company’s virtual AGM.
Chandrasekaran, who is also the chairman of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata group, said TCPL will continue the expansion of the Starbucks coffee chain in India despite a hit in revenue after the pandemic.
“We have significantly focused on strengthening the distribution, traditional distribution as well as e-commerce. This is an area you will see continuous strengthening, which will only help the company,” he said.
The focus of TCPL will be to come up with more products and push it through a strong distribution network “both offline and e-commerce, its own e-commerce platform and to leverage our Tata Super App also”.
News of Tata Sons’ digital acceleration and push into the consumer technology space have been coming thick and fast over the past few weeks. Earlier in June, the conglomerate’s wholly owned subsidiary Tata Digital confirmed a majority stake in online pharmacy retailer 1mg.
“The investment in 1mg strengthens Tata’s ability to provide superior customer experience and high quality healthcare products & services in e-pharmacy and e-diagnostics space through a technology-led platform,” said Pratik Pal, CEO of Tata Digital in a release.
News of acquisition came hot on the heels of Tata Digital’s other recent investments in the digital consumer universe, including its buyout of BigBasket a few weeks ago.
Also in June, Tata Digital announced an MOU to invest up to USD75 million in fitness startup CureFit. As part of the deal, CureFit co-founder and chief executive Mukesh Bansal is joining Tata Digital as President and will also continue in his role at the Bengaluru-headquartered startup.