Dabur bets on Make in Africa to boost continent’s share in Namaste’s sales

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26 Aug, 2025 12:21

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Dabur India is betting on local manufacturing in Africa to replace imports to ensure that its subsidiary Namaste Laboratories is able to derive in two years half of its revenues from the continent as against 30 percent now, according to Sunil Duggal, Chief Executive Officer of the maker of Real fruit juices and hajmola.

“What we have done now is we have localised manufacturing of Namaste products in our Africa plants, whether it is in Egypt or Nigeria or South Africa to may be 70-80 percent of domestic sales from this year. So this year we should see a good growth in terms of the volume of business we get from there. And while that 50 percent will take another two years or so, it will now happen because all the Africa sales will come from local manufacturing," Duggal told Moneycontrol in an interview.

He blamed the depreciation in the currencies of the emerging markets in Africa for the company lagging in its target as a large part of the goods sold by the African arm were imported.

Namaste posted a net profit of Rs 8.39 crore on operating revenues of Rs 558.12 crore in 2015-16. The Ghaziabad-based company derives 32 percent of its turnover from its international business. Dabur's consolidated net sales in the last financial year came at Rs 8,435.95 crore.

Namaste was one of the two major acquisitions – the other one being of Turkey's Hobi Group – that Dabur made in 2010. Even as Namaste was an ethnic hair care products company based out of Chicago, the acquisition was done with an eye on expanding operations in Africa. Namaste then also sold products not only in the US but also Africa, the rest of North America, Europe and West Asia.

"What we need to do is to get much higher slice of the Namaste business from Africa. At the moment, around 30 percent is coming. Our stated intent was that it should become around 50 percent by now when we bought the company. By 2017-18, we should have been 50 percent. We are still 30%," Duggal said.

To help it achieve the target in two years, Dabur in November last year also acquired South Africa's CTL Group of Companies that was till then its supplier.