Sundrop Brands is a packaged-foods platform built on the insight that Indian consumers want branded snacks and spreads that feel modern but cost like everyday staples - a business that began nearly 40 years ago with a single edible-oil brand and has since transformed into a multi-brand house spanning popcorn, peanut butter, ketchup and olive oil. The company was originally an affiliate of Conagra Brands, and a change in control in 2024 brought in new owners who set out to build an integrated foods platform, a vision that accelerated with the all-stock acquisition of Del Monte’s India business in early 2025. The recurring approach is to take a category where the company can be first or dominant - popcorn, nut butters, centre-filled cereals - and then use a low-cost innovation model and a distribution network reaching close to a million outlets to push those products through general trade at price points competitors struggle to match. # Business segments Three engines at different stages - a snacks-and-spreads cash cow built over four decades, a popcorn franchise that owns its category, and a recently acquired culinary-and-food-service platform that doubles the company’s reach into channels it barely touched before. ## 1. Sundrop: the staples-and-spreads engine that built the distribution backbone **A premium brand that started in edible oils and deliberately pivoted into higher-margin breakfast and spreads, using its legacy volume to keep the distribution network alive while the foods portfolio grew into the main profit driver.** - **Oils pay for the shelf, foods pay the bills** - the company keeps its mass edible-oils business at roughly 5-7% of total revenue, just enough to support the supply chain and distribution infrastructure, while the foods portfolio (peanut butter, oats, cereals) now contributes 60% of both sales and gross margin. - **Built the peanut-butter category from scratch** - Sundrop pioneered nut-based spreads in India and holds clear leadership, with volumes that kept growing at a 17% compound rate even before Hindustan Unilever entered, because the company competes on price rather than matching the advertising budgets of larger rivals. - **Recovering ground with new pack sizes and protein claims** - the spreads business lost share in modern trade and e-commerce when competitors launched high-protein variants, so Sundrop responded with seven new high-protein SKUs, bulk packs at efficient price points, and a competitively priced jaggery product. - **Cereals ride the distribution, not the ad budget** - centre-filled cereals like Sundrop Popz reached 120,000 stores by FY24, making them the most widely distributed in the market, and the strategy is to keep expanding store count until the base is large enough to justify sustained advertising. - **Direct reach to 475,000 outlets** - the company’s own field force covers 375,000 stores through a mobile-enabled ordering system, with another 100,000 outlets served through distributor salesmen, and total reach including wholesale and hawker networks for popcorn is close to one million outlets. ## 2. Act II: the popcorn franchise that owns 80% of the category **A perpetual license from Conagra Brands for the Greater India subcontinent, where the company is the undisputed number one in both ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat popcorn - and uses the snacks conveyor belt to push distribution far beyond what a foods business could normally support.** - **Two formats, one dominant position** - Act II holds more than 80% share in both RTC (at-home) and RTE (on-the-go) popcorn, with the RTE business growing 42% in FY25 as quick-commerce platforms gave it a new growth channel. - **The ₹10 price point is the volume engine** - 55-60% of the RTE popcorn business sits at the INR 10 price point, where the company measures success by unit growth rather than value growth, making the product an impulse buy that fits the small-basket economics of general trade. - **Snacks as a distribution conveyor belt** - bagged snacks are volume-intensive and low-cash-ring, so the company uses a full-truck-load model shipping directly from plants to distributors, which lets it build a distribution reach far wider than its foods turnover alone would justify. - **Manufacturing spread across the country** - because snacks need to be close to consumers for freshness and efficient freight, the company runs plants in North, East, West and South India, with enough capacity headroom in both production and distribution to absorb growth. - **Royalty that shrinks as the rest of the business grows** - the company pays Conagra a royalty of about 1.9% of foods sales for the Act II brand, a rate that naturally declines toward 1.7% as the Sundrop-branded portfolio grows faster. ## 3. Del Monte: the culinary-and-food-service platform acquired to double the channel mix **A perpetual license for India acquired through an all-stock merger in early 2025, bringing a business where nearly half the revenue comes from restaurants and institutions - channels the legacy Sundrop business barely touched.** - **Bought, not built** - the company acquired 100% of Del Monte Foods Private Limited in February 2025 for INR 1,300 crore in an all-stock deal, adding a manufacturing and R&D facility in Hosur, Tamil Nadu, and a portfolio that contributed roughly 40% of the combined entity’s pre-acquisition turnover. - **Food service is the hidden engine** - 44% of Del Monte’s revenue comes from the B2B channel serving restaurants and institutions, a business that grew 12% in the most recent quarter and is dominantly led by the Del Monte brand, giving Sundrop an entry into a channel where it had almost no presence. - **Ketchup, mayonnaise and olive oil** - the culinary range (ketchups, sauces, mayonnaise) is the largest category, while olive oil represents about 16% of Del Monte’s revenue, and the company passes commodity-price changes straight through to consumers to protect margins while driving volume. - **Channel mix is the mirror image of Sundrop** - Del Monte’s sales split is 44% food service, 17% modern trade, 12% e-commerce and only 19% general trade, which is almost the inverse of the legacy Sundrop business that draws 76% from general trade, creating a cross-selling opportunity that the company has only just begun to test. - **Exports to Middle Eastern pizza chains** - Del Monte supplies culinary products to Pizza Hut in the Middle East and sells into more than 15 countries across Asia and Africa, with growth coming from scaling up key-account business in the region. # Group structure and partners **A listed Indian parent controlled by a Mauritius-based promoter vehicle that is equally owned by two private-equity managers, with the Bharti group holding a fifth of the shares through the Del Monte acquisition, and perpetual licenses for two global brands underpinning the portfolio.** - **Two sponsors share control** - the promoter CAG-Tech (Mauritius) Limited holds 38.91% of the company and is 100% controlled by Zest Holding Investments Limited, which is owned equally by Samara Capital and Infinity Investment Management, with the entire promoter stake subject to a non-disposal undertaking as part of a security package for a loan. - **Bharti became a shareholder through the Del Monte deal** - the all-stock acquisition gave Bharti entities roughly 21% of the combined company, later consolidated to 20.95% through a scheme of arrangement that amalgamated three Bharti holding companies into Bharti Overseas Private Limited. - **Perpetual licenses for Act II and Del Monte** - both brands are held under exclusive, perpetual licenses for the Greater India subcontinent, with the Act II license coming from Conagra Brands and the Del Monte license acquired as part of the DMFPL purchase. - **Subsidiaries extend the footprint** - the company has a wholly-owned subsidiary in Bangladesh with a plant near Dhaka, a shelf subsidiary in Sri Lanka, and a domestic sales subsidiary (Sundrop Foods India) that employs 418 sales staff to expand distribution and in-store display. - **Management split along brand lines** - the Group Managing Director oversees the platform, while separate CEOs run the Sundrop-and-Act-II business and the Del Monte business, reflecting the still-minimal integration between the two operations.