The Indian Direct Selling Industry

Annual Survey 2011-12

The PHD Research Bureau in collaboration with Indian Direct Selling Association published the Annual Survey 2011-12 for the Indian direct selling industry and the report was released on March 22, 2013 at Hotel Oberoi, New Delhi by Ms. Ganga Murthy, Principal Advisor, Department of Consumer Affairs, Government of India.

Summary of the Annual Survey 2011-12 findings:

The Indian direct selling industry has been beating the economic slowdown, notching up remarkable growth over the years and has been expanding its horizons in India as a rapidly emerging alternate distribution channel. The direct selling industry has grown at 22% during 2011-12, with its sales revenue expanding from INR 52,294 million in 2010-11 to INR 63,851 million in 2011-12. The robust growth in the segment has been contributed by 22.5% growth in the organised and 17.7% growth in the unorganized segments of the industry during 2011-12. The industry grew from INR 33,226 million in 2008-09 to the present level of INR 63,851 million in 2011-12.

The concentration of sales revenue of direct selling industry in the Southern region has now started shifting to the other regions of the country. Due to large unexplored markets and emerging growth opportunities, the direct selling firms are now looking towards the vast consumer market for their products in the Northern and North eastern regions too.

The survey revealed that the share of Northern region in sales revenue moved from 15% in 2010-11 to 20% in 2011-12 and on the contrary, the share of Southern region in sales revenue has declined from 44% in 2010-11 to 38% in 2011-12. The share of Eastern region increased marginally from 14% in 2010-11 to 15% in 2011-12, while the share of north-east increased from 7% in 2010-11 to 10% in 2011-12. However, the share of western region declined from 20% to 17% during the same period.

Regional sales figures suggested that South contributed to INR 24,264 million to the gross sales revenue in 2011-12 while North contributed to INR 12,770 million. The West region contributed to INR 10,854 million, whereas the gross revenue generated by East region stands at INR 9,578 million followed by North East at INR 6,385 million.

It is interesting to note that during 2011-12, the Northern region has exhibited remarkable growth at around 56% while North Eastern region has grown robust at 37%. The Eastern region grew at 32%, whereas, the Western region grew at 19%. However, the Southern direct selling market has decelerated at -2%.

The direct selling industry has contributed significantly to self employment generation over the years, and the momentum has been kept up this year as well. The total distributor base of the Indian direct selling industry during 2011-12 stands at 48,53,232 out of which 39,80,016 distributors are employed by member companies, whereas, 8,73,216 distributors are employed in the non-member companies. The growth of total distributor’s network stands at 22.5% in 2011-12 over 2010-11, contributed by 24.2% growth among member companies and 15.2% growth among non-member companies.

The share of women has always been more than 50% of direct selling distributor base in India. However, with rising cost of living especially in metro cities, Indian men are also looking up to this sector as an earning opportunity, as the consumption expenditure has swelled up over the years. The share of men (direct sellers) increased from 36% in 2010-11 to 37.5% in 2011-12.

Out of the wide variety of products sold through the organised direct selling industry, products related to wellness contributed to the highest share of sales revenue at about INR 27,455 million (44%) while beauty/ cosmetics and personal care products at around INR 21,071 million (33%) were also very high in demand. Among other categories of products which have attracted the customers are home care and home improvement products with a gross sales revenue of INR 8,939 million (14%), consumer and household durables with INR 3,831 million (6%). Other products and food and beverages capture 3% and 1% of total sales revenue in the industry at INR 1,916 million and INR 639 million respectively.

According to the survey the main drivers of growth in this sector are high quality standards of products, brand name, reliability/durability, promotional measures and good demonstrations.

The total taxes paid as reported by the IDSA member companies including both direct tax and indirect tax amounted to INR 8,212 million posting a growth of about 27% in 2011-12 over INR 6,470 million in 2010-11. The percentage of total taxes in total sales revenue generation has also increased from 21.5% in 2010-11 to 21.8% in 2011-12.

It is interesting to note that despite the intensifying global economic crisis which is looming large across the world economic scenario and the persistent slowdown in Indian economic growth vis-à-vis deceleration in industrial output, the direct selling industry has shown considerable resilience, sustaining steady growth over the years. It is evident from the fact that only a marginal decline in growth of sales revenue was noticed in 2011-12 at 22% from around 27% in 2010-11 due to slowdown in consumption demand.

It is indeed encouraging to find that the direct selling industry has firmed its ground in the economy and with growing value perception of consumers, awareness about the product range, increasing accessibility to products and growing demand in the smaller towns, the industry has enormous potential to enhance its market presence in the coming times.

Going ahead, growth prospects of the industry are bright which is set to take off, driven by strong consumer base and expanding markets. The survey revealed that industry was positive about the robust growth of the direct selling industry in the coming years. Respondents felt that the size of the industry is estimated to leap-frog by 2014-15 scaling upto INR 1,08,436 million from the present level INR 63,851 million. Though the growth of the industry vary across its different segments like organized and unorganized sectors, however, overall the industry is slated to grow at an average of more than 20% in the next three years by 2015. Further, they felt that in the long term, over next three to seven years by 2020, industry could consolidate its position across the corners of the country and grow at an average rate of 25% scaling up to INR 3,40,000 million.

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Warm regards,

Dr. S P Sharma
Chief Economist