India insurgent consumer brands top USD 7.5 billion in FY25, Bain and DSG report finds

New "insurgent\" consumer brands in India have become a large part of the FMCG market. A Bain & Company and DSG Consumer Partners report said these firms earned over USD 7.5 billion in FY25. The report added that revenue rose 3.75 times in five years. It also said insurgents beat overall market growth by 3.3 times.

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The fourth edition of Game Changers 2026: India Insurgent Brand Report said these brands grew faster than peers. It stated they expanded 1.5 to 5 times their category rates. It also said they were building new segments at breakneck speed. The findings came from research on more than 200 insurgent brands.

Insurgent brands growth in India across consumer categories

The study covered food and beverage, beauty and personal care, apparel and lifestyle, home and kitchen, jewellery, and travel and hospitality. It found disruption across several segments. Jewellery led with nearly 6.5 times growth in five years. Beauty and personal care followed at 6 times. Home and kitchen, plus wearable electronics, grew about 4.5 to 5 times.

DSG Consumer Partners India Managing Director and Head Hariharan Premkumar said scale was still small. Hariharan Premkumar said, \"Consumer insurgents continue to significantly outpace the broader market. While they still account for less than 2 per cent of most categories with the exception of beauty & personal care, they are growing much faster than the category average,\". The report linked gains to faster growth than category norms.

Insurgent brands and the Insurgex Index in FY25

The report also tracked high-growth, capital-efficient firms through the Insurgex Index. It said the index expanded to 39 brands in FY25, up from 29 a year earlier. The report added that 19 new entrants together produced USD 600 million in revenue. This suggested a wider set of brands meeting the index filters.

Insurgent brands and digital commerce with quick commerce

Bain & Company Partner Rohit Shankar described how these firms compete and scale. Rohit Shankar said, \"They are winning by focusing on emerging or latent consumer needs, building mastery in media and channel deployment, and high velocity innovation. These capabilities have enabled insurgents not only to disrupt established categories and take share from incumbents, but also to create entirely new growth pools,\". The report also stressed digital commerce and quick commerce for faster expansion.

The study said insurgent brands were reshaping markets by spotting unmet needs. It said they created new consumption occasions and pushed newer formats into wider use. It also said niche segments were moving into mainstream categories. Still, the report noted scaling remained hard across the sector despite rapid growth.

The report highlighted limits to sustained size for newer consumer companies. It said less than one per cent of consumer firms founded since 2008 crossed Rs 100 crore revenue. It also said only 22 per cent of insurgent brands above Rs 100 crore went on to exceed Rs 500 crore. These figures showed growth did not always translate into long-term scale.

With inputs from PTI