There were quite a few challenges when the nationwide lockdown was announced in late March, especially related to the supply and delivery of essential goods. According to consumer goods companies, the latter part of the lockdown is expected to be stable as there is more clarity about supply and logistics.

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In an interaction with CNBC-TV18, Varun Berry, Managing Director of Britannia Industries revealed how the company managed to cope up with the short-comings.

He said, “The backend is functioning at a lower efficiency. We have had no problems procuring raw material. We started with a lot of hurdles, but we managed to tide over them. We have raw material are per the requirement. Some factories are not operating as per our requirement as of now; factories would be at about 25-30 percent efficiency, but we're scaling up every day.”

Speaking about inventories, Berry said, “We always have about 11 days of stock holding. We have been depleting stocks for the last six-seven days and hopefully production should be up to speed in the next five-six days. We're hoping that things work out as planned.”

“We do not know whether the lockdown would end on April 15. But we're ensuring that social distancing and all the new environment, health and safety practices are being adhered to at our factories. I think we would be at 70-75 percent of capacity utilisation in the next week or so,” Berry added.

Lastly, he addressed the surge in demand and said, “Demand is random. It is sustained; there is some amount of stocking that consumers are doing. So, in this circumstance, things are just flying off shelves. But it cannot happen forever. This would come back to normal soon.”