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XYZ Advisory Strategy and operations for family-run and mid-sized Indian companies

The XYZ Advisory casebook. Every engagement written up with the client's permission.

Case 14 of 48, published September 2026

Strategy, with operations support

The Rajkot snack maker that had to stop making half its range before it could sell in fourteen states

The family asked us which states to enter next. Six weeks of counting stock in godowns gave a different answer, and turnover went from ₹180 crore to ₹310 crore in two years.

Written by Sanjay Mehta, managing partner, who led the engagement. 9 minute read.

1The situation

Turnover, ₹ crore

Turnover rose from ₹180 crore in FY22 to ₹310 crore in FY25, up 72 per cent.

Nilesh Thakkar's father started frying sev and gathiya in a rented shed off Gondal Road in 1987. By 2022 the company sold 340 products through 210 distributors in Gujarat, Maharashtra, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, and turnover had sat at about ₹180 crore for three years running.

EBITDA margin

EBITDA margin rose from 8.0 per cent to 13.4 per cent.

The family's plan was to go national. Two national brands had started paying kirana shops in Saurashtra an extra 3 to 4 per cent trade margin, and the only answer the company had tried was to match it. Margin had fallen from 11 per cent to 8. The board wanted a map of which states to enter first, and a budget for the distributors they would need there.

That was the question we were hired to answer. It turned out to be the wrong one.

2What we found

Products in the range

The range went from 340 products to 180.

We spent the first six weeks away from the head office: in 38 distributor godowns, 120 shops, and the two plants at Shapar and Metoda. We counted stock rather than asking about it.

A hand writing figures on a paper sheet at a desk beside a cup of tea
Week three. The sell-through sheet was done by hand first, one line per product per district, before anyone was allowed to open a spreadsheet.

Days of stock held by distributors

Distributor stock fell from 41 days to 19 days.

Ninety products made 62 per cent of revenue. The other 250 each sold less than ₹40 lakh a year, and most were regional variants that only moved in one or two districts. Because every distributor was asked to carry the full range, the average godown held 41 days of stock, and the slow lines were quietly expiring on the shelf.

Expired stock written off, ₹ crore a year

Stock written off fell from ₹6.8 crore to ₹1.4 crore a year.

The company was writing off ₹6.8 crore a year of namkeen it had already paid to make, pack and ship. None of this showed up in the board pack, which reported sales to distributors, not sales to shops.

The range had been built for Gujarat's shops. It could not travel. Taking all 340 products into eight new states would have multiplied the problem eight times over.

We came in asking for a list of states. They came back and told us to stop making half of what we make.

Nilesh Thakkar, managing director

3What changed

The plan the board signed in August 2023 had three parts, done in this order and not in parallel.

A shopkeeper at a billing counter as a customer pays by phone
The counter decides. We read billing data from 120 shops, not distributor invoices.

First, the range came down from 340 products to 180. The cut was made with the regional sales managers in the room, district by district, so the products that mattered locally stayed where they sold and nowhere else.

Second, distribution moved from 210 small distributors to 64 super-stockists, each carrying a shorter, faster range. Stock in the channel fell from 41 days to 19, and write-offs dropped to ₹1.4 crore a year.

States with active distribution

States with active distribution went from 4 to 14.

Third, and only then, the new states. The company entered in two waves of five, starting where Gujarati and Marwari households already bought its products on visits home: Karnataka, Telangana, Delhi, Punjab and West Bengal. Each wave went live only after the previous one had held its sell-through for a full quarter.

Twenty-four months after the first workshop, turnover was ₹310 crore and EBITDA margin 13.4 per cent. In March 2025 a Mumbai-based fund invested ₹45 crore for a minority stake, on the strength of those two numbers.

The part we are proudest of is the dull part. The company still reviews its range every quarter against the same sell-through sheet we drew up in week three, and nobody from XYZ Advisory has touched it since.

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  10. Case 04 Closing two of five dairy plants and keeping every farmerMilk cooperative's private processor, north Gujarat, 1.2 lakh litres a day Strategy +4.1 ptsoperating margin

    Five half-empty plants within 90 km of each other. We re-drew the milk routes so two plants could close without a single village losing its collection centre.

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