While FMCG major Tata Consumer Products (TCPL's) June quarter numbers were largely in-line with analysts' estimates, Sunil D'Souza, the MD and CEO of the company remained confident of maintaining double-digit growth for the business.

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“We have always maintained saying we will continue to drive double digit growth; we will continue to drive total bottomline ahead of the margins and that remains the focus,” D'Souza said in an interview with CNBC-TV18 on Thursday.

The CEO noted that gross margin is broadly steady, but now the focus is on the international markets — primarily tea in the UK and coffee in the US.

Pricing action, structural changes in international biz

He pointed out that Tata Consumer Products has undertaken pricing action, which in line with the inflation, and structural changes in its international business.

"As a result of that - gross margins in most of the businesses are back to where they were barring US coffee, where coffee prices are still on the uptick, but whether it is UK, Canada, etc. gross margins firmly back on track,” D'Souza said.

The CEO of TCPL further said that the industry is under pressure globally, the Canada market is on a decline. “Volume has therefore been an issue because overall industry, for example, is under pressure. Canada’s overall industry has declined. We have maintained our market share there," he said.

On the UK market share, he said: “UK market shares on the upswing given our relaunches with the new packaging of Tetley, new blend of Tetley etc. So that is on a strong footing. More importantly, we had said we are making structural cost corrections primarily in the UK, and UK has swung by nearly 900 basis points on the EBIT margin versus last year given the cost correction that we made."

'Portfolio expansion is the key'

TCPL will be launching the UK variant of Soulfull, which is under the brand name Joyfull, in the month of August, in Tesco, D'Souza said. "We are starting to expand our ready to eat portfolio in the USA. So, leveraging the same cost, expanding portfolio is going to be the key,” he mentioned.

The FMCG major remains focussed on growing organically and inorganically in the near future. "A full-fledged FMCG company means beyond food and beverages; right now, we are focused on food and beverages. I would say other FMCG categories like personal care, homecare, etc. Right now, I would say in the broadly medium-term, we are still focused, we have still got a lot of runway in the food and beverage business itself. We remain focused on growing both organically and in organically,” he added.

D'Souza also said the company will look at value added categories in the food and beverage space.

The company has lost 20 basis points market share in the salt business. “In salt we lost about 20 bps of share on moving annual total (MAT) basis, but if you dissect the salt pieces – we had taken close to a 33 percent price increase and our volume continues to be, this quarter we have grown 5 percent versus same quarter last year. So that remains to be on a strong trajectory. We had taken aggressive pricing when salt prices had gone up,” he said.

TCPL Q1 numbers

On Wednesday, TCPL posted a consolidated net profit of Rs 359 crore in the first quarter. This is higher by 30 percent when compared with Rs 277 crore in the last-year period.

Revenue from operations during the quarter rose 12 percent year-on-year to Rs 3,741 crore.

The revenue growth is mainly driven by strong 16 percent uptick in India Business, 3 percent (CC) in international business and 5 percent (CC) in non-branded business.

Consolidated EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) for the reporting quarter rose 19 percent to Rs 547 crore.

On Thursday, the company's shares closed 2.71 percent higher at Rs 850.20 on NSE.