MUMBAI: Rural India is to receive particular attention from Godrej Consumer Products Ltd (GCPL) as the Indian FMCG giant restructures its operations with the aim of doubling domestic revenues in the next five years.

GCPL is to make its domestic business an independent profit centre separate from its international operations and it plans to grow its homegrown sales from an estimated Rs 4,500 crore at the end of 2015 to Rs 10,000 crore by 2020, Livemint reported.

In addition, the company has overhauled its entire go-to-market strategy and is using technology and analytics across its sales and marketing functions to boost profits and adapt to changing consumer behaviour.

Rural India accounted for just 15% of GCPL's overall revenues in 2012, but the company wants to increase the proportion to over a third (35%) in the next three years. It hopes to do so on the back of its OneRural programme, which is being launched next month.

"The target with OneRural is to have rural account for 35% of overall revenues in the next three years," said Sunil Kataria, who takes over as the head of operations in India and the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation.

With a current reach of nearly 60,000 villages, Kataria said GCPL wants to expand its revenue base by appealing to what it calls the "progressive rural customer", who behaves like an urban consumer but lives in the top 35,000 villages in the country.

Also under consideration are specific product launches for the rural market and ways to improve its service frequency to once a month in the top 10,000 villages.

But the company's focus is not exclusively on the rural market because it wants to increase its penetration in urban markets too.

GCPL says it will do so by using new technology to improve productivity, improve its distribution partnerships and split its portfolio into two lines among its front-end sales staff.

Another key part of its strategy for the urban market includes segmenting high-growth channels, such as cosmetics and pharmacies, the company explained, in order to deepen its reach.

Data sourced from Livemint; additional content by Warc staff