Brands
Rural India, local disruptors, small packs drive FMCG growth: Worldpanel
MUMBAI: Once a luxury, now a lifestyle. Premiumisation in India is no longer the preserve of posh metros and plush wallets, it’s trickling down to rural towns, reshaping FMCG, and even spilling over into housing, cars and gadgets.
That’s the big takeaway from Worldpanel India’s latest report, which reveals that premium brands now account for 15 per cent of FMCG volumes across everyday categories like detergents, soaps, toothpaste, tea, biscuits and skincare. And while the trend slowed briefly in 2024, the long-term trajectory is clear: India wants more “premium” and it wants it on its own terms.
Once seen as laggards in this space, rural households are now powering premium growth. Their share of super-premium volumes has jumped from 30 per cent in 2021 to 42 per cent in 2025, and affordable premium products now see over half their demand from villages.
It isn’t just multinational giants raking it in. Homegrown disruptors like Burhani liquid dishwash in Madhya Pradesh, AVT gold cup tea in Tamil Nadu, and Meera shikakai shampoo in Karnataka and Odisha are winning hearts by marrying premium positioning with natural, health-focused credentials.
Bite-sized formats like Sensodyne (75g), Nabati wafers (30g), and Tresemme sachets (6ml) are driving trials without denting the “premium” aura. Even super-premium players like Dove, Malkist and Taj Mahal tea are cashing in with affordable packs.
It’s not just soaps and snacks. Luxury housing sales (Rs 3 crore plus homes) surged 80 per cent in 2024, premium smartphones grew 8 per cent YoY in Q2 2025, and luxury car sales crossed 50,000 units for the first time. Clearly, India’s “premium” shift is rewriting aspiration itself.
“Premiumisation in India is no longer restricted to metros or high-income households,” said Worldpanel by Numerator, managing director – South Asia, K. Ramakrishnan. “Rural consumers are becoming aspirational, disruptors are redefining premium, and affluent households are reprioritising spends. For brands, this is both a challenge and a golden opportunity.”
Brands
IICT partners with Gativedhi to bring studio production tools to students
New MoU lets students explore AI-driven production pipelines for AVGC-XR
MUMBAI: The Indian Institute of Creative Technologies (IICT) has teamed up with Gativedhi Technologies to give students a front-row seat to modern studio production. The collaboration will integrate Gativedhi’s AI-powered production intelligence platform, Shotrack, into academic programmes, letting students experience the workflow systems used by animation, VFX and gaming studios.
Under the MoU, faculty, students and researchers will get hands-on access to Shotrack through beta programmes, pilot deployments and academic evaluations. This will allow them to explore simulated production pipelines, understand asset management, track tasks and monitor schedules, essentially seeing how complex projects come together behind the scenes.
Shotrack is designed to tackle a key industry challenge: when multiple studios work on the same project, differing internal systems often create bottlenecks, slow approvals and complicate version control. The platform provides a unified production environment, enabling smoother collaboration across distributed teams while generating operational insights and predictive analytics to optimise crew allocation, forecast schedule risks and manage costs.
The collaboration also opens doors to Gativedhi’s wider ecosystem. Upcoming tools include StudioTrack, for studio operations management covering budgeting, recruitment and IT infrastructure, and WorkTrack, which measures workflow efficiency and team productivity across industries.
IICT plans to embed these tools into programmes covering animation pipelines, VFX workflows, gaming production and media project management. Students will also benefit from guest lectures, masterclasses, workshops, internships and research projects that connect academic learning with real-world studio practices.
IICT CEO Vishwas Deoskar, said the partnership provides “An environment where production pipeline tools can be explored, tested and refined while students gain insight into how large-scale productions are organised.”
Gativedhi Technologies founder & CEO Senthil Kumar added, “This collaboration introduces students to real-world studio management tools and helps us improve our platform with academic feedback.”
With Shotrack in classrooms, India’s future animators, VFX artists and gaming producers will get a taste of studio life long before they step into one.
