As India's CPG market surges from $203.9B in 2024 to $331.2B by 2033, visibility gaps hinder growth. Learn how ADA Global's AI-driven solutions unify data for better forecasting and inventory control.
Bridging the Visibility Gap in Modern CPG Supply Chains India’s CPG market is growing faster than most supply chains can handle. Valued at approximately USD 245 billion in 2024 , it is projected to reach around USD 1.1 trillion by 2033. This growth exposes operational cracks quickly.
A 2018 KPMG India study highlights a key issue. More than half of Indian organizations still lack end-to-end supply chain visibility. This leaves planners, sales, and logistics teams with partial or outdated data, causing drifting forecasts, delayed inventory decisions, and reactive operations.
Indian retail structure complicates matters: Kirana stores coexist with modern trade chains and online marketplaces, each with different behaviours and data reporting. Unifying this into real-time insights is essential to reduce demand volatility and excess stock.
Today, supply chain visibility in India is no longer an operational nice-to-have. It determines how quickly a business can respond to change, protect margins and stay relevant . The logic is simple and familiar to anyone who has run operations. If you cannot see what is happening, you cannot plan what to do next.
Key Impacts of Visibility Gaps :● Forecasts based on incomplete data lead to 15-20% overstock in volatile regions.
● Stockouts or excess inventory contribute to 10-15% expiry losses in categories like beauty and dairy.
● Logistics delays and reactive fixes cost CPG firms millions annually.
● Reduced trust in data erodes decision-making confidence.
Where Visibility Breaks Down In most CPG organizations, the issue is nota lack of data. It is that the data does not connect.
ERP systems (handling purchasing and inventory) often are isolated from DMS (tracking distributor sales and stock), varying by region and partner. This forces days of manual reconciliation.
This remains one of the most persistent challenges in supply chain visibility for CPG companies.
Demand variability makes matters worse. Seasonal and regional swings are part of daily reality. Hair oil is a good example. Demand rises in North India during winter but softens in humid southern regions. When visibility is weak, forecasting teams tend to smooth these patterns into averages. The outcome is predictable. Too much stock in some locations and stockouts in others.
Expiry and liquidation losses follow. Beauty and personal care brands such as Dabur and Emami lose significant value each year due to expired or unsold products. The root cause is usually the same. Batch-level inventory is not visible across the full distribution network, so risk is spotted only when it is too late to act.
Manual work compounds the problem. Many mid-sized FMCG companies still use Excel to manage returns, claims, and credit notes. These spreadsheets slow down finance teams and hide the true cost of serving each channel.
Tier-2/3 markets add opacity: Offline sub-stockists deliver late or incomplete sell-through data, forcing assumption-based planning.
Why Reporting Is Not Visibility To cope, many organizations add reporting layers on top of existing systems. It helps with tracking, but it does not solve the core problem.
Excel-based trackers and basic BI dashboards cannot support CPG supply chain visibility at scale. They depend on delayed uploads and manual consolidation, which makes them unsuitable for fast-moving environments.
Inconsistent data definitions make things worse. When SKUs, locations, and distributor hierarchies are defined differently across systems, central reporting becomes a clean-up exercise. Overtime, confidence in supply chain data analytics erodes because teams no longer trust what they see.
Timing is another issue. Weekly or monthly updates force reactive behaviour. By the time a stock issue or excess inventory appears in a report, the financial impact has already occurred.
Summary: Reporting vs. True Visibility Traditional reporting tells you what happened (e.g., a stockout occurred). True visibility reveals why it happened (e.g., delayed replenishment due to distributor delays or demand spikes) unlocking proactive, AI-era decisions that prevent issues before they impact margins.
Making Data Useful, Not Just Visible The next stage of FMCG supply chain visibility starts with a simple principle. Data must be aligned before it can be acted on.
A single data layer that connects product, location, and time across the organization is now essential. Without it, teams continue to debate numbers instead of making decisions.
Modern solution services build on this foundation by applying intelligence. AI models analyze multiple signals together, including sales trends , inventory levels, expiry timelines, and broader economic indicators. This helps planners understand not just what is happening, but why it is happening.
Agentic AI goes one step further. Instead of waiting for manual intervention, the system initiates actions on its own. Replenishment quantities adjust when demand shifts. Expiry risks trigger early liquidation. Reconciliation issues are flagged automatically rather than discovered weeks later.
ADA’s CPG Supply Chain Intelligence solution embodies this approach, seamlessly connecting ERP systems (SAP,Oracle, Microsoft Dynamics 365), DMS platforms (Botree, Field Assist, Bizom),and ecommerce channels (Amazon, Flipkart, Blinkit).
ADA Capabilities Breakdown: ● Unifies disparate systems for real-time, end-to-end data integration across distributors and retailers.
● Enables regional Generative AI forecasting at distribution centers and distributor levels.
● Automates batch-wise expiry tracking, it is critical for dairy and beauty categories and to minimize losses.
● Streamlines reconciliation, reducing manual credit note validation.
● Optimizes inventory with replenishment recommendations for slow-moving or regional SKUs.
This enables Gen AI forecasting at both the regional distribution centre and distributor levels. It supports batch-wise expiry tracking, which is critical for dairy and beauty categories. Automated reconciliation reduces manual credit note validation. Inventory optimization logic provides real-time data integration for distributors and retailers, including replenishment recommendations for slow-moving or regional SKUs.
Together, these capabilities demonstrate how to improve supply chain visibility in FMCG environments that operate at scale.
Conclusion For CPG brands managing large general trade networks and thousands of SKUs, supply chain visibility is not about producing more reports. It is about control. When real-time supply chain data is unified and available across the network, teams stop reacting to problems after the fact and start managing the business with intent. Inventory decisions improve, expiry losses fall, and service levels become more predictable.
India’s digital ecosystem is accelerating this shift. UPI-scale infrastructure, ONDC integration, and broader ERP and DMS adoption are driving supply chain digitization, making organizations increasingly data-rich but still insight-poor. The companies that close this gap will be the ones that turn supply chain data analytics into timely, operational decisions rather than retrospective analysis.
Over the next few years, AI-led, self-correcting systems will move from pilots to standard practice. Stockouts, expiry risks, and delivery delays will increasingly be identified early and resolved through automated actions. This evolution will redefine FMCG supply chain visibility inIndia, but it still starts with a solid foundation of integrated data.
Key Takeaways for 2026 :● Unify data for proactive decisions.
● Leverage AI to cut risks by 20-30%.
● Embrace digitization amid ONDC and UPI growth.
ADA supports CPG and FMCG organizations asa long-term solution partner in building that foundation. By enabling real-time data integration for distributors and retailers, ADA helps teams establish true end-to-end CPG supply chain visibility and act on it with confidence.
For organizations looking to improve forecasting accuracy, reduce inventory risk, and regain control across complex distribution networks, the next step is clear. Make the supply chain visible with a partner like ADA .
.webp)