Premium Grocery Retail in India
Our previous piece looked at India's grocery market as a whole: kirana versus organised retail, and why organised is the only realistic entry point for imported brands. This piece narrows that further. Within organised retail, there's a specific segment built for products like yours: premium, specialty grocery.
Image: Rustomjee Urbania Godrej Natures Basket
The segment that actually stocks imported food
India's best known example is Nature's Basket. Founded in 2005 by the Godrej Group and acquired by Spencer's Retail (RP-Sanjiv Goenka Group) in 2019, it now runs more than 30 stores across Mumbai, Bengaluru, Pune, Kolkata, and Delhi-NCR, built specifically around imported ingredients, gourmet foods, and artisanal products. Its customer base is exactly the profile European F&B brands target: affluent, urban, willing to pay for quality and origin.
Nature's Basket has since pushed further upmarket with a "luxury food retailing" format inside select stores, modelled on European gourmet food halls, stocking items like Dutch sea asparagus and Japanese strawberries alongside everyday premium staples. That's a useful signal in itself: the appetite for European specialty ingredients specifically is already being built into flagship retail concepts, not just tolerated as a niche.
The segment is real, but it isn't static
Worth being direct about this: premium grocery retail in India has seen real churn. Foodhall, launched by Future Group in 2011 and once a category leader, closed in 2023. FreshTerra, a new premium experiential grocery concept, launched in 2025 with plans for 12 to 15 stores across Delhi-NCR by FY28.
That churn isn't a sign the category is shrinking. It's a sign the format is still being figured out, and that matters for how a European brand should think about entry. Betting your India launch on a single retail partner or format is riskier than betting on the category and staying flexible about which specific retailer or channel carries you into it. This is one of the reasons a distributor with multi-city, multi-format retail relationships matters more than a single retail listing.
The category is growing fast, and from a small base
India's gourmet foods market was valued at roughly US$4,55 billion in 2024, and is projected to grow to US$23,47 billion by 2033, a compound annual growth rate above 18%. Specialty and gourmet ingredients specifically (imported cheeses, oils, artisanal products) are forecast to grow 14 to 16% annually, reaching an estimated US$40 to 50 billion by the mid-2030s, driven by premiumisation among affluent urban households.
For context: that's a category growing roughly twice as fast as India's packaged food market overall. It's still small relative to the broader grocery sector, which is exactly what makes it early rather than saturated.
A new channel is opening: premium quick commerce
The most recent shift is happening in quick commerce, not physical retail. Zepto has launched "Select," a premium grocery offering. Blinkit has expanded its Gourmet Store. Specialist platforms like FirstClub and Handpickd have built their entire business around curated premium groceries, and Amazon and Flipkart are reportedly building similar premium propositions.
The logic from platform operators is straightforward: affluent consumers were quick commerce's earliest adopters, they've stayed loyal, and they're now commercially significant enough to warrant a dedicated, curated offering. For a European brand, this means the specialty retail opportunity is no longer confined to physical stores in five or six cities. It's extending into a digital channel that reaches the same affluent household, faster, and without needing shelf space in a physical store at all.
What this means for entry planning
Premium grocery in India isn't one channel, it's three: established specialty supermarkets (Nature's Basket and its peers), newer experiential formats still finding their footing, and a fast-growing premium tier within quick commerce. A distributor who can move across all three, rather than being locked into one retail relationship, gives a European brand far more room to find where its specific product actually performs best before committing further.
OnRoute India helps premium European food brands enter the Indian market, from first conversation to shelf. If your brand is exploring India, contact OnRoute to talk through what a market entry could look like for you.
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