Strategic Decisions in India's Feed Industry

Q1. Which roles have required you to make irreversible or high-cost decisions under uncertainty, and what scale of P&L, volume, or farmer base were you directly accountable for?

In my roles with Suguna Foods and Japfa Comfeed & the nutrition industry, I have handled full P&L responsibility across multiple states. This included pricing decisions, volume planning through Distributor Networking, farmer engagement program, margin management, and working capital control in a highly volatile feed business.

The scale—monthly business of 22–38 Cr, with a wide distributor network and direct connection to a very large farmer base. Because of this, most decisions—especially around pricing, credit, and inventory —keep the objective of customer retention, which impacts both market share and profitability.

One situation I clearly recall is the sharp increase in soybean prices. Within a single quarter, input costs rose by close to 20%, and the pressure to increase in the market at once was likely to lead to a quick loss of volume; also, delaying the decision would hit margins.

I worked with a more balanced approach, based on past behavior—Farmer's reaction to price increases and how the competitor responds.

Based on the situation, increased prices in two steps rather than one, which…