Ladies and gentlemen, good day and welcome to the Patanjali Foods Limited Q3 FY25 earnings conference call. As a reminder, all participants' lines will be in listen-only mode, and there will be an opportunity for you to ask questions after the presentation concludes. Should you need assistance during the conference call, please signal an operator by pressing star, then zero on your touch-tone phone. Please note that this conference is being recorded. This conference call may contain some forward-looking statements about the company, which are based on the beliefs, opinions, and expectations of the company as of the date of this call. These statements are not the guarantees of future performance and involve risks and uncertainties that are difficult to predict. I now hand the conference over to Mr. Sanjeev Asthana, CEO. Thank you, and over to you, sir.
Good morning. Thank you for joining us today for Patanjali Foods Limited's call to discuss the results of Q3 FY25. I'm joined by the company's CFO, Kumar Rajesh, along with Mr. Priyendu Jha from the investor relations team and our IR partner, Strategic Growth Advisors. We have uploaded the results collateral on the stock exchanges as well as the company's website for your reference. Let us talk about the industry trends and operating environment for the quarter gone by before we delve into our performance. Q3 FY25 has experienced a moderately warm operating environment. The sharp rise in input costs was a key driver of higher inflation. Wheat prices surged by 12% in Q3 compared to Q2 due to reduced supply in the physical markets. Additionally, the government increased the minimum support price for all the wheat crops by 4%-7%.
Edible Oils also saw a significant price hike, impacting overall margins. Throughout the quarter, palm oil remained more expensive than sunflower and soybean oil, marking a significant shift from the previous pricing trends. The refined palm oil experienced nearly 67% year-on-year inflation in Q3 FY25 due to higher import duties and currency fluctuations, as most palm oil is sourced from overseas. While imported palm oil prices rose due to tax availability, domestically resourced oil prices have also increased given the widespread use of imported oil. In response, many large FMCG players implemented price hikes of 3%-7% in the December quarter. Due to the price rise, consumers reduced their consumption, particularly in urban areas. The urban demand in India remains under pressure and subdued, consistent with the previous quarter.
One major reason for the slowdown has been the high food inflation, which tightened the purchase strength among low and middle-class families, thereby dampening urban demand. The new wave channels like quick commerce and e-commerce continue to gain traction. We are listed on all the key platforms and are expanding our presence across all these segments. At an industry level, the general trade continues to face challenges, particularly in urban areas, resulting in lower ROIs for traders, FMCG players. FMCG players were actively collaborating with GT traders to enhance their profitability and improve realizations. Given the dual stress of demand slump and inflationary pressure experienced by industry in Q3, let's review our performance. During the course of this call, we will be referring to standalone financials. Our business is undergoing a tactical shift with a focus on the high-margin FMCG segment.
Starting 1st November 2024, the acquisition of HPC business is now fully integrated into our current operations. This move has strengthened our product portfolio and has served as a significant growth driver for the company. It is expected to drive substantial growth in both revenues and EBITDA. This move aligns with our vision to expand the foods and FMCG business, aiming for it to contribute nearly half of our total turnover in the next four years' time. By leveraging the distribution reach of Patanjali Foods, the HPC portfolio has started adding weight to our offering. This has enhanced our existing FMCG product range and our ability to grab more market share and wallet share. I'm pleased to update you that in Q3 FY25, we reported the highest-ever quarterly revenue from operations at INR 9,103.13 crores. The top-line growth is achieved without much change in the pricing.
The total EBITDA was ₹581.24 crores, and PAT was ₹370.93 crores. Patanjali has been awarded Asia's most trusted iconic brand by the Council for Brand Business Promotions and Research and Brands Council ratings, reaffirming our industry leadership. We strategically spent on marketing and advertising to build on brand recall and brand loyalty. We have spent 2.5% of our FY25 revenues from operations on advertising and sales promotion, the highest in last 10 quarters. We have undertaken various regional as well as national-level activities. Coming to our segmental performance during the quarter, the food and other FMCG achieved a revenue of ₹2,037.61 crores, with an EBITDA of ₹153.40 crores, with a margin of 7.53%. The rise in input costs has driven an increase in the overall cost structures, leading to the margin compression. Our biscuit segment recorded sales of ₹395.37 crores.
Dry fruits, spices, and condiments, tea and honey, and herbal product categories sustained volume growth on Q1 basis. Honey recorded nearly INR 146.87 crores, doubling its sales from the previous quarter. While urban demand is facing challenges, we remain optimistic about its long-term potential. We will continue to closely monitor the overall demand scenario to ensure the sustainability of our revenues in the coming quarters. The staples, which include rice, atta, pulses, wheat products, and dry fruits, recorded a revenue of INR 744.31 crores. Our recently launched nutraceutical products have been well received by consumers. Our revenues in nutraceuticals for Q3 25 stood at INR 15.09 crores. Additionally, we have witnessed increased sales through e-commerce, improving overall operational efficiency. Nutrela continues to grow from strength to strength, giving us healthy EBITDA margins due to lower purchase prices of soybean seed.
As a trusted household name recognized for its strong consumer loyalty, Nutrela has been awarded the Most Preferred Brand for 24/25 by Marksmen Daily. This reinforces its reputation and market leadership. The campaign, "India Ko Strong Banana Hai" and "Nutrela Khate Hain" have attracted roaring success and spurred mass convergence on the needs for healthy eating and meeting our protein needs. Nutrela's surge has achieved a quarterly sales of INR 138.66 crores, with a 4.83% year-on-year growth. The contribution of modern trade, quick commerce, and e-commerce to sales has shown steady growth for both mass and premium product categories. This is an update on HPC business. The HPC business segment was integrated into Patanjali Foods Limited on 1st November 2024. The operational streamlining has been smooth. We expect full-scale operations within a few months. In this quarter, it shall begin. The HPC business segment's revenues is stood at INR 420.36 crores.
The dental care revenue within that split was INR 223 crores, followed by skin care at INR 101.419 crores and home care at INR 56.69 crores. And the balance is for hair care and other products. Our flagship products across categories such as Dant Kanti continue to grow. We remain focused on premiumization and portfolio expansion in this segment. As explained previously, the edible oil faces inflationary pressures with respect to the trends of oil prices in Q3 FY2025. The cash markets experienced steady movements following the duty hike in September 2024. There was a noticeable price divergence between futures and physical prices, with 11% divergence in palm oil and 6% in soy oil. To mitigate the risks, the company consciously reduced its hedge ratio, maintaining an average hedge ratio of 10% in Q3 2025.
Hedging decisions, which are based on thorough fundamental and technical research, the company has employed a natural hedge through regular position adjustments in line with market dynamics. In the case of edible oil, price increases are typically passed through to the consumers. Due to holding lower price inventory, the price rise worked in our favor in this quarter. India's palm oil imports fell 46% in January, whereas soy oil imports rose 4%, the highest in seven months, while sunflower oil imports increased by 9.5%. In our edible oil business, we registered a revenue of INR 6,717.47 crores, with an EBITDA margin of 5.42%. Of the above for Q3 2025, the palm plantation segment contributed 4.1% to the total revenue and 14.6% to the EBITDA. Our commitment to grow the oil palm plantation business continues. We have expanded our cultivated land, taking the total to 87,109 hectares as of December 2025.
With 46% of our plantation falls within the prime age range of seven to 25 years, the prime plantations have a high yield potential. The new mill at Arunachal Pradesh has commenced production, marking a significant milestone in our expansion in the northeast. We reiterate our plan to take the area and the plantation to 500,000 hectares over the next five years, which will cover about 60% of our requirements. In the recent budget, the Honorable Finance Minister emphasized the importance of self-reliance in edible oils. An allocation of ₹10,000 crores has been made over six years to the National Mission on Edible Oils, aimed at reducing import dependence on edible oils. This renewed push by government is essential and will empower farmers with better seeds, infrastructure, and other resources for cultivation. At Patanjali Foods, we welcome this initiative and are efforts aligned closely with the government plan.
Now, I would like to summarize our overall financial performance in the quarter. The total income stood at INR 9,143.78 crores. Total EBITDA stood at INR 581.24 crores, with 48.79% growth on year-on-year basis. That of INR 370.93 crores, registering a 71.30% growth on year-on-year basis. In the nine months of financial year 25, the numbers stack up as follows. The total income of INR 24,544.67 crores. The total EBITDA stands at INR 1,510.17 crores, with a year-on-year growth of 47.79%. It grew by 68.71% to reach INR 942.81 crores. From here on, what is the path forward? We must innovate and adapt to navigate the dynamic FMCG landscape. Our strategic focus for the upcoming quarters will include premiumization, revamping the urban playbook, strengthening our presence in hinterland, enhancing productivity and distribution, and driving the digital transformation which the company is taking.
As a consolidated FMCG entity, our endeavor will be able to retain a growth-oriented company, expand in high-margin segments, and reinforce our vision of becoming a prominent food and FMCG player in the country. The industry projections suggest that Q4 will show improvement, with CPI expected to be around 4.5%, thus improving consumer purchasing power and spending. Further, the recent budget introduced significant income tax cuts. We anticipate these measures to help moderate inflation and increase disposable incomes. We also expect demand stimulation and economy momentum, which has been sluggish in recent quarters. Several tailwinds, including strong domestic demand, favorable government policies, and softening of inflation, are driving growth, stabilizing prices, and improving consumer purchasing power. Going forward, we remain cautiously optimistic about the demand outlook, commodity headwinds, and better cost management for the company for the remainder of FY 2025.
With this, I conclude our presentation and open the floor for a Q&A session. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to remove yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. Ladies and gentlemen, you may press star and one to ask a question. The first question is from the line of Dhiraj Mistry from Antique Stock Broking. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir, and congrats on the good set of numbers. So my first question is on what would be the volume growth in our oil business and realization?
Because given the inflation which we have witnessed in the oil business, would you split your revenue growth in volume and pricing?
So, Dhiraj, that's a great question. There is a certain degree of volume compression which has happened across the board. And so, for example, in palm oil, we had a volume compression of close to about between Q2 and Q3, I'm talking of this year. We had about 40,000 tons of reduction. In soybean, it was very marginal. It was just about 5,000 tons. In sunflower, it was about 7,000 tons.
So broadly, two trends have defined the compression in the volumes in edible oil side, which was more than made up by the price rise which happened, which occurred both in the international markets and as well as the price increase that we took domestically, partially on account of the duty increase and partially on account of the consumer requirements. So broadly, the sudden increase in the international prices prompted consumers to cut down on certain consumption that was clearly witnessed. The second big trigger which drove the change was that, as I mentioned in my call in the presentation, the palm oil prices for a change went significantly higher than soybean and sunflower oil prices.
And, palm being the biggest driver of the volume, the change in the industry in terms of the HoReCa segment, the institutional segment, etc., they started cutting down on the palm oil consumption, which was the biggest driver, and which is where we witnessed the largest change which occurred. But broadly, this trend should tend to stabilize as we see going forward in this quarter. So already, the volumes are tending to pick up. But broadly, overall, I must say that the oil consumption has slightly flattened in the last two months in a very distinct way. And certainly, going forward, we are seeing a muted volume growth overall. So this is also witnessed, incidentally, not just in our volumes, but across the board. Even the country's imports of palm oil have gone down substantially.
So broadly, this is reflective of the supply-side challenges and the price spread which has suddenly occurred between palm and soybean. This preference has started falling on both on soy and sun, and that's why this change has occurred.
Got it. Got it. Thank you for your details. Just can you help me with the absolute total oil volume and metric tons for the quarter?
Yeah. So absolute volume for the quarter we have is 5.8 lakh tons, is what we did. Last quarter, it was 6.07 lakh tons. So there's about a drop of 27,000 tons.
Got it. Got it. And second is for the margin for the oil business. We have seen good improvement in our oil business.
So I would like to know, is there any one-off in this where you have realized some inventory gain or anything like that, or this kind of margin is quite sustainable going ahead?
So broadly, the margin we made was about 364 crores, which is 5.42% compared to the previous quarter, which was 4.04%. And last year, just for a comparison perspective, it was 1.96%. So we've always maintained that the margin construct is between 2 and 4%, which is a standard one. 4 is a good margin, and 2% is a fairly standard margin. Below that, I think it's a cause for alarm. So part of this gain of 364 crores came through the one-off price inventory gain that we got. But most of the part has been a very natural phenomenon of pass-through of the prices that we maintain.
So basically, since we are largely a long-only position business, we buy ahead of time, and then we process, refine, and package, and sell it in the marketplace. So there's a natural gain that we got. But yes, part of that, I would say about INR 60-65 crores would typically have come as a one-off inventory gain. So broadly, 5.42% is largely an outlier, and we will go back between 4-5% range overall. But just to give another perspective, that in the nine-month period, for example, we've done better than our trend rate. We've done about 4.55% in the margin construct, which is a fairly positive trend that we are following. And I'm reasonably hopeful that over the next couple of quarters, this trajectory will be maintained.
Got it. Got it. Thank you for your details. And second question is for the food business that we have considered.
Yeah, some part of the stress is also because of the urban slowdown which has been there. But my question is on margins. Margin has constantly seen downward pressure from 18% margin at the start of the last financial year. Now it has gone down to 7.5% margin. When can we start seeing improvement in this business? And can you help me with the revenue for the staples business also and segment-wise EBITDA margin in foods business?
Yeah. So for the foods part, with the overall basis, I think I can give you that number. So broadly, what we have is that INR 2,038 crores was the revenue. We made 7.53% margin in this quarter. This is versus 10.19% in the previous quarter and 10.85% in the last year quarter, same quarter last year. So broadly, two trends have defined.
We've always maintained that the margin profile, and incidentally, on the nine-month basis, our margin is 9.09%. We have consistently maintained that food business overall will give between 8%-10% margin in our business. And we still maintain that, and we are pretty much on course to achieve that. The second point is that what exactly was the defining part which has actually changed the margin construct? Three things broadly. One is that in the staple foods, there are two categories within the foods category. One is staple and Indian ethnic foods. Within the staples category, what has happened is that there's a sales loss of almost about INR 250 crores, which was largely on account of the rice prices, which collapsed by nearly 10%, which was a major significant change which occurred.
The second change which occurred was the increase in the wheat prices and palm oil prices, which has impacted the biscuits margin because these are the core raw material which goes into that. So palm, for example, increased by nearly 30%-40% in the previous quarter. And likewise, the wheat prices, as I mentioned, went up by almost 12%. So these two things. Third thing is that we increased our ad spend by nearly 20 crores. The additional amount that we spent in this quarter was 20 crores on the ad spend. So they all combined basis typically tended to put pressure on the margins, and you saw 7.12%. This we are going to change in this quarter. So we should pretty much be in the same ballpark range of 8%-10%, which we are pretty confident about.
Got it. Got it.
And, sir, now the HPC integration is complete. Is there any operational synergy still to be done or whether we are done with the operational synergy and we can expect full performance from Q2 onwards and the margin profile for the same as well?
So, this quarter, the Q4 of this quarter now, I'm expecting that we should be so initial two months sort of have been spent. The larger part of the integration broadly is over. And minor matters are being sorted out right now. But broadly, I would expect that this quarter four should be in a fully operational status. So we did have some initial 15, 20 days of changeover, etc., happen. But I think this quarter, I'm expecting that we should get on to the similar heavy trend rate of the HPC business, and pretty much we should start integrating that into our revenues and margins.
Got it. Thank you very much, sir. If there is any other question, I will get.
Thank you. Before we take the next question, a reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Yug Modi from AP Capital. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Hi, sir. Good morning, sir. Thank you for this opportunity. Sir, any update on the GT as last quarter? You had said that we are restrategizing for GT. So what is happening on that right now? So the two parts to the GT. One is that we are seeing that there is a stress, as I mentioned, in the urban sort of segments. So the GT growth overall has been flat. And in the Q3 versus Q2, so pretty much standard, we haven't seen any.
Typically, in the winter season, the ghee sales tend to increase always, and normally, we see an uptick of between 8%-10%. We haven't witnessed that, but that, I would imagine, is more a problem that I was mentioning about the urban demand. It is slightly muted, and ghee being an expensive product typically tends to get sold more in the urban areas than the rural areas, so that's what we're witnessing, but that we have seen more as a temporary blip. I think we should get back to post the budget, post the overall volatility that we're seeing now. Hopefully, that should start to kick in in this quarter, so we should be in a better state. In terms of the strategy part of ghee, I mean, the idea was that the uncovered territories on the distribution side, that we would tend to cover more.
The territories, for example, in terms of the mix of the SKUs, that has started sort of working in. So I would say that this quarter, flat sales on the Ghee side should not be a dampener. We should pick it back in the Q4. And I think already we are seeing the change in that on the sales side.
Okay. Just one follow-up to that. Sir, what was the revenue for Ghee for this quarter and for the previous quarter?
So Ghee, for example, we sold INR 356 crores in this quarter. And the previous quarter was marginally one crore less, INR 355 crores. Okay. So that was helpful.
So find that out from my side. Thank you, sir.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Kunal Shah from Innova Capital. Please go ahead.
Yes. Sir, my question was on HPC business.
I want to know how the integration process has been for us. And also want to know who is heading it? How has the synergies been thus so far, and what is the future role for us for that?
So HPC business is going the integration has gone on very well. And that part is going on very well. We have already integrated the teams. We have already integrated all the IT systems. And we have also already done in the process of distribution part is already done for the business. So overall, in terms of the change part of it, so on the overall, we have HPC business, right? So the team integration, the IT integration, the business of the working through in terms of the distribution side.
The synergies, as I mentioned, it will take 15-18 months for that to happen. That we started already working on, so in terms of distribution at the ground level, how do we synergize? How do we consolidate in terms of the manpower synergies at the ground level? So that will take time, but otherwise, the integration has worked out fairly smooth. All the systems and everything is aligned, and now in this quarter, we should be tending to stabilize and move it forward.
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you. A reminder to all the participants that you may press star and one to ask a question. The next question is from the line of Raj Karia from Chrystal Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Good morning, sir. Thank you for giving me the opportunity.
Can you give guidance on distribution, how it's working for us with the modern trade and general trade? How are the margins here, inventory days, and demand from this channel?
So as of now, the split is as following. We are about 8% is what we do through the e-commerce and the modern trade. So 2% is through e-commerce and quick commerce, and about 6% is what we're targeting to be doing through the modern trade system. Within that, there are two parts that we're working on. We would like this ideally to be closer to 12%. And there is a lot of work that is happening on the emerging channels like quick commerce. Likewise, a lot of work is happening on the e-commerce side, including working on certain product listings on Amazon U.S. website, working through that process. So this effort is going on constantly.
In terms of the split of certain, just to give you some ballpark numbers, broadly, in Edible O ils, we do about 5% contribution comes through the modern trade. Typically, about biscuits, we do about 3% through the channel. Food and non-food, we do about 13%, and Nutrela food, we do about 9%, which comes through modern trade and e-commerce. All these numbers are set to change. We want to nearly from current 8% to taking to 12%. That process is on. We're investing quite heavily on social media. We're working on listing and bringing our products on all the emerging quick commerce channels. We are available across the spectrum on all channels, so that is a work in progress, and we are reasonably confident that we should be hitting that target of 12% at least of the overall sales through coming through e-commerce and modern trade.
That work is going on.
Okay, sir. Thanks a lot.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Rahul Desai from RB Securities. Please go ahead. Hello, sir.
Thanks for taking my question. Am I audible?
Yes, you're audible.
Yeah. So my question was, we are aware that how the demand is coming out in urban area has been very sluggish. So when do you see that improving? And on coming to the rural demand, do you think that's sustainable?
So both sides. One is that in terms of precise prediction as to when the urban demand is going to come back, I think it's difficult to mention. But having said that, the budget has been very promising on account of the income tax rule change. There is, the repo rate from the RBI has gone down.
We are hoping that the overall environment will become more benign. Inflationary pressures will tend to decline, and the possibility of the urban demand coming back, and especially in the consumer goods side, I think we're reasonably hopeful, but having said that, we should be patient about it because that is not something which is guaranteed and can be taken as a given. The second question about the rural demand, I'm very optimistic because the budgetary provisions, we are seeing already the momentum picking up on the rural demand side, so I'm reasonably hopeful that the rural demand should continue to sustain itself. Government has been very supportive on the MSP prices that they've given, the number of social programs which have been announced, so there's a lot more money which is being injected in the rural areas into the overall agriculture ecosystem.
So hopefully, it should be sustained momentum on the rural demand side.
Oh, that was very good. But I have one more follow-up question. How has the January been with respect to demand, and how is it looking for rural and urban both?
Slow. To a straight answer, the urban has been slow. And the rural has been pretty much on the same trajectory. There is no significant uptick or downside on the rural side. But overall, urban areas have been very sluggish. So there's a lot of hope which is banking on the budget being a big trigger for the urban demand to come back. And we are waiting for that.
Okay. Okay. That was very helpful. Thank you so much from my side.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Dhruv Modi from DSM Securities. Please go ahead.
Mr. Dhruv, I would request you to unmute your line and speak, please. Mr. Dhruv, due to no response from the current participant, we will move on to the next participant. The next question is from the line of Kuldeep Gangwar from ASK Investment Managers. Please go ahead.
Yeah. Good morning, sir. Hello.
Good morning.
Yeah. Sir, can you please provide the split of food between the specialty food and the staples? And second part, the management, you have mentioned that 2.5% was the A&P expenditure. So it is proportional to overall company sales. How is it?
I think your voice is very muffled. I think you're on speakerphone. If you can just.
Yeah. I'm saying, if you can now.
Better. Slightly. Yeah. Yes, please.
So I'm saying the split of food business between specialty food and the staples.
And second part, you have mentioned about, say, 2.5% of sales in the A&P. So it is overall company sales, like INR 9,000 crores, 2.5%. How we should treat it?
So yeah. So first of all, let me just give you the split of Indian ethnic foods and consumer staples. So we did INR 744 crores of Indian ethnic foods in this quarter. And we did identical amount in consumer staples, almost INR 744 crores. So there's some points there. The margin that we made on ethnic foods was INR 141 crores, which is at 19%. This is versus 23% in the previous quarter and 17% last year's same quarter. On the consumer staples side, we had a negative margin of INR 35 crores. This was primarily the largest contributor to this, the rice price increase and the ad spend that I spoke about.
Broadly, that contributed to the change in the foods category. The 2.5% of the advertising and sales promotion was on the overall basis of including Edible Oils and everything.
The number is closer to INR 2.5 crores, right?
INR 226 crores to be exact.
Okay. Okay. What should be expected in the staple business margin in the coming quarters? Like, Q3 was one-off, or how we should rate it?
Q3 was one-off consumer staples because this rice, suddenly, there was a collapse on account of a lot of action which happened in the marketplace. Broadly, that was the impact factor. It was more one-off. I'm expecting this to stabilize in this quarter.
Okay. It appears like in the specialty food, the margin is largely stable. The volatility is coming from the staple part of it. Going forward, probably it should stabilize.
Yeah.
So, staples and ad spend both. I mean, I'm not deciding because that's become a critical component of our overall strategy of marketing that we need to sort of crank up on our advertising and promotion. So we'll continue aggressively pushing for this. But this rice bit was a one-off. I'm not expecting this to sustain itself in this quarter. So we should be certainly better off.
Sure. Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for this.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Abhijit Kundu from Antique Stockbroking. Please go ahead.
Hi, sir. Thanks for the opportunity. Hi. So one question was on the HPC business. Where you have prescribed that—
Abhijit, a little louder, please. Your voice is very unclear. Slightly unclear. Yes. Just speak a little louder, please.
Mr. Abhijit, I would request you to please use your handset.
Sure.
Now you can hear me?
It's loud.
Yeah. So in the HPC business, dental care is going to move 223.47 crores sales. How should we see it? At what rate would have grown? How has been the performance of the market share? Some color on that, first question.
Yeah. So dental business, we did 223 crores of revenue in the two months that we had, which is nearly half of what overall sort of revenue that we do. So fairly good. I think post the launch of the range of new sort of products that we had, the response has been very good. We've supported by ad spend that we did and on the promotion side. So it's picking up. Now, having said that, the thing is that it has moved into a new entity while we expect everything to stabilize in this quarter.
But we are reasonably hopeful of maintaining 10%-12% growth in this category. We should do better than the marketplace because a lot of areas which were uncovered by us, we've launched products to fill in those gaps in those product categories. There's a confidence that we should be able to maintain that growth rate. This quarter, I think by end of this quarter, by end of March, I think we should get a reasonably good idea as to where the gaps are that we need to work on and how the growth trend has been. But broadly, I would say it's positive to good.
Okay. Great. And on the biscuits division, INR 395.37 crores and INR 1.64 crores of different year-on-year growth. The largest player in this category, they have grown by about 6% and primarily driven by volume growth.
So one, have you taken in price hikes during the quarter, which would reflect in Q4 in case of biscuits? And why this muted growth? I mean, biscuits is primarily usually sold in the rural markets. And rural markets relatively have done better than urban markets. So just some color on the price hike and why the muted growth, any recovery in growth you would see in the coming quarters?
Sure. So I think we had a scorching growth in the last few years on the biscuit side. So almost from 950 crores, we grew to 1,650 crores. So it's a huge spike that we had. There's a bit of tempering in this quarter. So one is on the growth part of it. This year's growth overall has tended to be just about 6%. We had targeted to keep it at 15%.
So, overall, we have seen that there is some bit of slowdown in the biscuits overall demand. And we've taken no price increase. So in terms of this entirely, all this growth has been largely on the volume side. And the business segments where we are in, the price increase is not possible. So even passing it on is a tougher call. That's one. Second is that as a guidance perspective as to what we expect to end the year with, I would imagine that the yearly growth would be anywhere between 6%-7%, which is slightly. This particular quarter has been off-season also. So biscuits inherently also have a certain degree of seasonality to them. And so this particular quarter is different. I'm not anticipating that any significant drop to be there.
I think we should get back to, in the next fiscal, we should get back to the targeted range of 15%. There's a lot of work which is continuing that we want to reduce our dependence on Doodh biscuits. We want to continue focusing on the premium categories, which are showing a very healthy uptake. We want to focus on newer variations that need to be launched. And I think that both these efforts will work in parallel, so reasonably good. I think volume growth will maintain, and that is obviously impacting the margin. The palm and the prices that we saw on wheat side, I think, have impacted the margin a bit. But overall, if I were to tell you, in the biscuits category, our EBITDA margin is still at about 11.51%. We still would like this trend to continue.
We should end the year with pretty much a similar margin construct.
Wonderful. And in terms of distribution, any distribution increase? You have done any numbers on that and what's the plan ahead? Because you're referencing home and personal care business and the foods business would strongly benefit from it. So overall, the food business would strongly benefit from that. So expansion plans there?
Yeah. Yeah. So overall. That I'm seeing right now. So on the tracked numbers, 1.5 million is our direct retail outreach. We are expanding in certain categories. For example, in nutraceuticals, we have expanded substantially our reach of GT. Though the focus and drive is much more towards the e-commerce side. Biscuits, we continue to expand. And the indirect reach, we estimate, is almost nearly 1.25 times of that.
So broadly, on the distribution side, there are regions where a serious amount of work is happening, including reconfiguring the teams and working through that. So for example, in South and East of India, we need to do a lot of work. And in the Northeastern part. And so this will continue to keep the pace. The positive with us is that there's a lot of headroom for growth on the distribution side with us compared to a lot of our eminent industry peers who almost have reached a saturation level. So we are reasonably confident that this growth expansion will continue to happen. And the target is that we should cross 2 million retail outlets with a direct reach. And that will continue to expand and build on. So that effort is month-to-month that is getting tracked and that is getting worked on.
Thanks. Thanks a lot.
Thank you.
Thank you. As there are no further questions from the participants, I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Sanjeev Asthana, CEO, for closing comments.
Yeah. Yes, sir. So overall, thank you very much for all the questions that we had today. And with this, we conclude the call. If you have any further sort of queies, you may contact SGA and our investor relations advisors. And we look forward to connecting with you in the next quarter after the quarter results. Thank you.
On behalf of Patanjali Foods Limited that concludes this conference, thank you for joining us, and you may now disconnect your line.