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Journalism of Courage
Most investors tend to overlook the obvious. While the spotlight stays on tech, finance, or consumer internet, a quiet performer has been compounding value — right from supermarket shelves across India. Chances are you’ve had their biscuits, used their bread for a sandwich, or unknowingly grabbed a product off their English Oven rack during a grocery run.
That company? Mrs Bectors Food Specialties.
Backed by flagship brands like Cremica and English Oven, Mrs Bectors has quietly built a high-margin, premium-focused business that has:
● Grown earnings at 46% CAGR over four years
● Emerged as India’s top biscuit exporter
● Built a moat as the largest supplier of buns to QSR giants like McDonald’s and Burger King
● Achieved this while staying nearly debt-free and expanding into new regions
Much like Jubilant FoodWorks did a decade ago, Mrs Bectors is stacking up growth levers that compound quietly but powerfully. The question now isn’t whether the fundamentals are solid; it’s whether the market has fully appreciated the scale of what’s being built.
At first glance, Mrs Bectors Food Specialties may seem like just another mid-sized FMCG company, operating in the crowded space of biscuits and bakery. But a closer look reveals a business model quietly designed for scalable, high-margin growth.
What makes Mrs Bectors unique is not just the breadth of its portfolio but the depth of its execution and the optionality it has built into both domestic and export markets.
Mrs Bectors has smartly split its consumer-facing strategy across two verticals – Cremica for biscuits and English Oven for bakery. While Cremica currently contributes about 61% of revenue, English Oven, which accounts for around 35%, is rapidly scaling in high-consumption urban markets.
Cremica has established itself in the northern region with a roughly 5% market share in the organised biscuit segment. While its all-India share is just ~1.5%, this masks a deeper trend: the brand is over-indexed in premium biscuits, with premium SKUs now accounting for 42% of domestic biscuit revenue, up sharply from 28% in FY22.
This indicates not just a shift in consumer preference but also pricing power, which is key for margin expansion in a low-loyalty category like biscuits.
English Oven, on the other hand, is already among the top three premium bread brands in India’s metro markets. Its presence across the fresh, chilled, and frozen bread spectrum gives it supply chain superiority. The category is experiencing rapid formalisation as consumers move away from unbranded breads, especially in urban and semi-urban areas.
Together, these two brands are not only addressing everyday consumption categories but are doing so at a premium positioning. This dual-brand strategy ensures better average selling prices, more pricing control, and stronger brand loyalty compared to mass-market competitors.
One of the least understood aspects of Mrs Bectors model is the scale and profitability of its export business. Exports account for roughly 31% of the company’s overall revenue and nearly half of biscuit segment sales.
Export destinations include 70+ countries, and partnerships with global retailers like Walmart and Lulu Group have deepened its reach. Importantly, Mrs Bectors is now pivoting away from low-margin contract manufacturing and toward private label exports, which offer better margins and long-term stickiness.
With plans to establish a new subsidiary in the UAE targeting the MENA and African markets, the company is setting itself up to diversify revenue streams while protecting itself from domestic demand cycles.
Unlike many Indian consumer companies that view exports as a byproduct of domestic manufacturing, Mrs Bectors treats it as a parallel growth vertical backed by tailored product lines, dedicated capacity, and region-specific branding. This approach not only reduces currency and geography concentration risks but also provides margin stability, as export realisations are often higher than domestic prices.
Another underappreciated advantage is Mrs Bectors stronghold in the institutional space. It is the largest supplier of buns to QSR giants like McDonald’s, KFC, and Burger King in India.
It also supplies baked products to cloud kitchen operators like Rebel Foods and multiplex chains such as PVR. These B2B relationships give the company predictable volumes, help maximise plant utilisation, and serve as a buffer during retail demand shocks.
As India’s QSR market is expected to grow at an 18% CAGR and touch Rs 1,440 billion by FY29 (as per Anand Rathi Research), Mrs Bectors is already embedded deep within the value chain. Importantly, these contracts are not easily replaceable — QSR players demand consistent quality, hygiene certifications, and delivery infrastructure that most small-scale suppliers can’t meet. This creates an operational moat that’s often missing in the retail biscuit business.
Mrs Bectors financial model thrives not on pricing gimmicks or cyclical demand but on structural margin expansion built into categories as mundane as biscuits and bread, and that’s precisely where the opportunity lies.
Despite operating in low-ticket segments, the company posted a gross margin of 46.7% in FY24, among the highest in Indian FMCG.
Where most packaged food companies scale via branding or distribution first, Bectors is quietly leveraging process control and customised capacity utilisation. Its QSR contracts are not just high-volume – they are precision-aligned to reduce wastage, keep SKUs tight, and maintain consistent plant runs. That’s part of why its buns, cakes, and pizza bases often break even in weeks, not quarters.
One of the most overlooked strengths in the business is operating leverage at the backend.
With export orders and institutional baking absorbing fixed costs, new product introductions in biscuits or English Oven SKUs enjoy a plug-and-play cost base. That’s why new launches like millet cookies or preservative-free breads are margin accretive from year one — a rarity in FMCG.
Finally, premiumisation isn’t just visible on supermarket shelves. It’s in the numbers: average realisation per pack has grown faster than category inflation, and English Oven’s share in modern trade is climbing quarter by quarter, suggesting rising customer willingness to pay for “everyday indulgence.”
Put simply, Mrs Bectors isn’t just growing —it’s becoming more profitable with each incremental rupee of revenue. That’s the kind of financial engine that quietly compounds over time.
At first glance, Mrs Bectors current valuation, trading at over 60x FY24 earnings, may appear rich, especially for a mid-cap FMCG firm in commoditised categories.
But to stop at the headline number is to miss the structural shift playing out underneath.
What sets this valuation apart is the quality of earnings and the visibility of growth levers. Bectors has moved beyond price-led growth into volume-led premiumisation across both biscuits and bakery.
The gross margin profile of ~46% (see Figure 5) is already comparable to Britannia, but it operates in segments with far more headroom for organised penetration and regional brand building.
Its earnings are compounding with zero debt, strong return ratios, and consistent free cash flow generation.
The key challenge for any business commanding a premium valuation is consistent execution.
In the case of Mrs Bectors, several variables could influence outcomes over the next few years. The company’s reliance on premiumisation assumes that consumers will continue trading up across biscuits and bakery, an assumption that may not hold uniformly across geographies or income segments, especially during periods of inflation or economic slowdown.
In exports, geopolitical and regulatory disruptions, forex volatility, or changing trade dynamics could impact margins and order flows. On the operational front, capacity additions in Dhar and Khopoli are critical, and any delays or underutilisation could affect near-term profitability.
Additionally, the competitive intensity in packaged foods remains high, with deep-pocketed incumbents and regional players both vying for shelf space and consumer loyalty.
While Mrs Bectors has demonstrated steady growth and operational discipline, the next phase will likely test its ability to scale without diluting margin, brand positioning, or return ratios.
Execution, in that sense, remains both the opportunity and the risk.
Note: This article relies on data from the annual report and industry reports. We have used our assumptions for forecasting.
Parth Parikh has over a decade of experience in finance and research and currently heads the growth and content vertical at Finsire. He has a keen interest in Indian and global stocks and holds an FRM Charter along with an MBA in Finance from Narsee Monjee Institute of Management Studies. Previously, he held research positions at various companies.
Disclosure: The writer and his dependents do not hold the stocks discussed in this article.
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