Maintaining a Live BPC Sectoral View: From Primer to Ongoing Investment Thesis
Built and maintained a written sectoral position on Indian BPC over several years, updated against live market signals.
Manas C.
Associate Manager at EY-Parthenon
From their time as
Associate Manager
EY-Parthenon • 2026
Overview
Manas has maintained a written sectoral view on Indian BPC since authoring the BCG sector primer, updating it as the market has moved. The discipline he applies is that every entry in his category files has to be a claim, not a clipping: what he now believes, what has changed his mind, and what would prove him wrong. He reads primary sources before commentary, including DRHPs, annual reports, earnings calls for listed consumer names, and macro data. His cadence is a regular weekly block that has
The Story
Manas has maintained a written sectoral view on Indian BPC since authoring the BCG sector primer, updating it as the market has moved. The discipline he applies is that every entry in his category files has to be a claim, not a clipping: what he now believes, what has changed his mind, and what would prove him wrong. He reads primary sources before commentary, including DRHPs, annual reports, earnings calls for listed consumer names, and macro data. His cadence is a regular weekly block that has been on the calendar for the last couple of years.
His current position on BPC is that the D2C cohort is running into a structural ceiling. The first generation won on genuine insight: Indian consumers were underserved on efficacy-led, ingredient-transparent products, and digitalized distribution let brands reach them without fighting for shelf. But the CAC economics only worked while performance marketing was cheap and the category was uncontested. Both conditions have ended.
What remains is a set of brands with strong first-purchase conversion and weak repeat, trying to buy their way into general trade, where incumbents have a multi-decade cost advantage. His view is that the survivors will be the ones who solved offline distribution early enough to still have cash when digital CAC breaks down.
What would change his mind: durable repeat rates holding above category norms at scale without a step-up in marketing spend, or a genuinely new low-cost offline route. He watches quick commerce contribution to BPC volumes closely for exactly this reason: if it is building repeat rather than just cannibalizing, his thesis weakens.
He translates this directly into a diligence lens: the question stops being whether the brand is good and becomes what the path to a distribution moat is, and whether it is funded.