OPINION | Breaking Through the Mid-Scale Barrier: Lessons from India’s consumer brands

Many consumer companies reach mid-scale through agility, strong founder involvement, and functional intensity.

India’s consumer market continues to offer immense potential, driven by rising incomes, evolving aspirations, and the premiumisation of everyday categories.

Many homegrown brands have capitalised on this momentum, achieving significant scale in relatively short periods. However, as companies approach the ₹2,000–3,000 crore revenue range, they often encounter a different kind of challenge. It is not one of ambition, but of execution, alignment, and institutional depth.

After a threshold, scaling’s about strength

Scaling beyond this point is not merely about growing faster. It is about growing stronger and more sustainably. While some companies plateau, others manage to make the leap. Here are the structural shifts that set them apart.

Bridging the capability deficit

Many companies reach mid-scale through agility, strong founder involvement, and functional intensity. But institutional scale demands more than individual leadership. It requires a mature, layered organisation with a reliable second line of management, robust operating rhythms, and digital enablers that provide forward-looking visibility.

Firms that fail to build these capabilities often find themselves over-reliant on a few key individuals. In contrast, companies that break through proactively invest in talent depth, process clarity, and data-backed decision-making.

Evolving the go-to-market model for complexity

Initial growth is often driven by distribution expansion, especially in general trade and modern retail. However, as brands scale, they must operate across a multi-channel environment including e-commerce, quick commerce, institutional, and export.

This complexity demands more than reach. It requires channel clarity, differentiated execution models, and real-time demand management. Companies that succeed at this scale invest in robust GTM structures with clear accountabilities and consistent incentive systems.

For example, a leading personal care player reorganised its GTM structure to separate core portfolio management from channel innovation, allowing both to scale without conflict.

Strengthening Brand Equity: From awareness to aspiration

By the time companies reach mid-scale, brand awareness is often high, at least in core markets. The next leap comes from building aspiration and premium relevance, especially if the company is expanding geographically or entering higher-value categories.

This shift requires not just increased media spends, but also clear brand architecture, distinctive visual identity, and contextually relevant storytelling. Several regional dairy and food brands have successfully rebranded in recent years, moving from functional familiarity to emotional resonance.

Exercising strategic discipline on category expansion

Growth via adjacencies is a common aspiration, but without coherence it can dilute focus. The most successful companies take a depth-before-breadth approach, consolidating leadership in core segments before entering new ones.

This includes evaluating adjacencies not just for market size, but also for brand relevance, execution capability, and margin structure. For instance, a health food brand that had expanded into five categories eventually chose to divest three and double down on just two, achieving better margins and consumer loyalty.

Balancing professionalisation with agility

At this stage, many companies begin institutionalising governance through professional hires, formalised strategy cycles, and structured performance tracking. But there is a fine balance between bringing in structure and creating bureaucracy.

The right model often lies in hybrid governance, where business units or category heads have autonomy within a common strategic framework. Several successful firms have also introduced advisory boards or external experts to guide this transition without undermining entrepreneurial energy.

Deploying capital with strategic precision

Many firms at this scale have access to capital through internal accruals, public markets, or private equity. But how this capital is deployed often makes the difference.

Leaders prioritise investments that strengthen core capability, create brand distinctiveness, or unlock new sources of growth. Others, despite access, spread resources thin across unrelated bets, diluting both impact and return on effort.

The Path Ahead: What differentiates the scalers

Breaking through the ₹3,000 crore milestone requires a deliberate shift in the way the business is led and scaled. Companies that succeed typically share the following attributes:

* Clarity of strategic ambition supported by disciplined capital allocation

* Executional depth across GTM, supply chain, and portfolio management

* Strong brand equity with consistent identity across platforms and markets

* Organisational resilience with capable second-line leadership and robust systems

* Governance maturity without losing agility or responsiveness

The inflection point, ₹2,000–3,000 crore, is a crossroads, not necessarily a ceiling. Companies that cross it successfully do so not by pushing harder, but by elevating how they think, decide, and build.

(Mani Singhal is Managing Director and Co-Lead, Consumer, Consumer Tech and Retail Practice, Alvarez & Marsal.) 

Views are personal and do not represent the stand of this publication.