Rishabh Jain is making sure the bhujia maker’s leap from Bikaner’s lanes to supermarket shelves in Dubai and New Jersey doesn’t come at the expense of financial discipline. For him, numbers are not just about reporting performance but about shaping strategy.
Rishabh Jain, CFO, Bikaji Foods International Limited
Bikaner has always been synonymous with bhujia. From small shops lining the lanes of Rajasthan’s desert town to supermarkets in Dubai and New Jersey, the humble snack has travelled far. At the centre of this transformation is Bikaji Foods International, a company that has grown from its roots in traditional Indian snacks to a listed FMCG player with global ambitions. But scale alone doesn’t make for a success story in FMCG. Behind the colourful packs of bhujia and namkeen lies a story of numbers, margins, hedging, and capital discipline.
When Rishabh Jain, CFO of Bikaji Foods International Limited, talks about finance, he doesn’t describe it as an exercise in compliance or number crunching. For him, the finance function has to sit at the centre of strategy.
“My focus is on shaping finance as a true business partner that drives both growth and profitability,” Jain tells Financial Express. “I see my role as enabling data-driven decision-making across functions whether that’s pricing architecture, SKU rationalisation, channel profitability, or supply chain efficiencies.”
In a competitive FMCG market, even small improvements in working capital, trade spends, and route-to-market costs can significantly impact the bottom line.
“In short, beyond compliance, my role is to be a strategist, challenger, and enabler, helping the FMCG business grow responsibly and profitably in a highly dynamic market,” says Jain.
It’s a philosophy that has underpinned Bikaji’s expansion, from strengthening its snack portfolio to exploring international markets.
For all its diversification, Bikaji’s engine still runs on the products that built its brand. “Our portfolio is anchored by traditional snacks, which contribute nearly 70% of overall revenues and serve as the core margin engine of the business,” Jain says.
The remaining pie is more varied: packaged sweets bring in 12.5%, western snacks 8.5%, papad around 6%, with frozen products and cookies filling out the rest. “Importantly, all our categories enjoy healthy margins, with traditional snacks continuing to drive the bulk of profitability,” he says.
At a time when FMCG peers often face stretched balance sheets, Bikaji has sharpened its approach to capex. Jain explained that decisions aren’t made on gut feel or growth-at-any-cost.
“We use a combined approach which is financial thresholds for discipline, payback metrics for cash flow planning, utilisation triggers for scalability, and strategic filters to ensure long-term value creation,” he says. “This helps us deploy capital where it accelerates growth without compromising profitability or balance sheet strength.”
Recent moves including automation projects, capacity expansions, and a joint venture with CG Foods in Nepal reflect that discipline. Even M&A, Jain insists, is filtered through one yardstick: “ensuring every rupee deployed drives sustainable growth and shareholder value.”
Few industries are as exposed to commodity swings as FMCG. For Bikaji, wheat, oil, and packaging costs can make or break margins. Jain’s approach has been to get ahead of volatility rather than be hostage to it.
“On the cost side, we actively pursue commodity hedging strategies, which provide us with a cushion against price swings and help smoothen input costs over time,” he says. “These measures, combined with operational efficiencies, allow us to protect gross margins and sustain profitability, even in volatile environments.”
The message is clear: short-term spikes may sting, but Bikaji’s framework is designed for medium-term stability.
Liquidity management may sound mundane, but in FMCG it often separates resilient companies from fragile ones. Bikaji has kept its cash cycle lean, even during festive peaks.
“In our business, peak seasons do create higher working capital intensity, but our model is inherently lean,” Jain explains. “We operate largely on an advanced model with customers, which significantly reduces receivable risk, while also enjoying good credit from suppliers. This structure keeps our cash conversion cycle very short and efficient.”
The discipline, he says, ensures the company is never forced into reactive financing or fire-fighting.
Also Read: Top 5 priorities for Indian CFOs in next 5 years
Being listed adds another layer of complexity, quarterly expectations on one side, long-term bets on the other. Jain acknowledges the tension but frames it as a balancing act.
“Our approach has been to maintain a disciplined balance, protecting profitability in the short term through sharp cost management and pricing agility, while channelling capital into long-run priorities like automation, distribution expansion, and category diversification,” he says.
Bikaji’s export revenue, at 3.5–4%, may look modest today, but Jain sees it as part of the company’s growth runway. Risks, he insists, are contained, pointing to forex hedging coverage and measured expansion.
For a brand rooted in Indian traditional snacks, exports also serve a dual purpose: diversifying revenue and carrying cultural equity abroad.
According to Jain, governance upgrades are as critical as financial discipline. “From my experience at Bikaji, three finance leadership imperatives that peer CFOs should adopt are: growth with margin discipline, enabling agility through a data-centric approach, and strong governance and investor confidence,” he says.
This is not merely academic. Bikaji has, in recent quarters, restructured subsidiaries, exited non-core units, and set up a Section 8 company for CSR, aligning corporate responsibility with financial accountability.
Looking ahead, Jain is clear about the ambition, “Our goal is to scale revenues faster than market growth, enabling us to consistently gain share while sustaining healthy margins and strong cash flows. The finance function is gearing up through sharper analytics, tighter working capital discipline, and strengthened governance, so we can act as a true enabler of growth rather than just a controller.”
For Bikaji, that means staying rooted in its core while chasing new categories and geographies with precision. For Jain, it means proving that in today’s FMCG, finance is not back-office, it’s frontline.
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