India’s FMCG market exceeds INR 9 lakh crore, with General Trade contributing nearly 65 percent of sales through over 6.5 million kirana stores. Modern Trade, though smaller at about 10 percent, is growing faster in urban and premium segments. Together, these channels create a complex execution environment for FMCG companies. While India has no shortage of strong products and founder led innovation, many high potential brands stall at the same inflection point where scaling distribution building field capability and institutionalising execution becomes fragmented and risky. While, strategy exists but execution fails to keep pace, to close this gap, Scale Sherpas founded in 2024 by industry veterans Anjana Ghosh, Atanu Gangoly, and Priyanka Gupta today announced the launch of Smart Force.
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Anjana Ghosh
In General Trade, challenges stem from gaps in outlet coverage data, weak distributor coordination, and low digital adoption. When these issues are addressed through siloed teams, costs rise and operational inefficiencies increase.
As a result, a shared workforce model is becoming essential. By flexibly deploying sales execution, merchandising, analytics, and demand planning resources across General Trade, companies can improve productivity. This approach enables consistent execution, better use of common data systems, reduced duplication, and faster responses to channel-specific growth opportunities.
Smart Force addresses these challenges through a ready-to-deploy execution model comprising shared on-ground sales teams, pre-mapped routes, and standardized execution processes. This allows brands to activate across multiple cities simultaneously, without building and managing large in-house sales organizations.
With Smart Force, brands can compress expansion timelines from the traditional 6–9 months to as little as 45 days, achieve faster numeric distribution through improved secondary sales movement and execution discipline, and reduce go-to-market costs by up to 40% compared to conventional in-house models.
The launch is led by Anjana Ghosh, Managing Director, Scale Sherpas, a seasoned FMCG leader with decades of experience building and scaling high-performance sales and distribution networks across Indian markets. Drawing from extensive frontline leadership, Smart Force has been designed as a practical, execution-first model focused on speed, efficiency, and control at the market level.
“Brands don’t need another strategy framework, they need execution that works consistently on the ground,” said Anjana Ghosh, Managing Director, Scale Sherpas. “Smart Force is built from years of hands-on experience. Most brands insist on owning their on-ground sales teams, even as they struggle to manage them effectively. The reality is that the last-mile sales force is often underpaid, disengaged, and operationally invisible to leadership. With repetitive work and no real career path, expecting ownership, empathy, or productivity becomes unrealistic. Sales leaders and HR teams remain stuck firefighting attrition and inefficiency, mistaking control for capability. The uncomfortable truth is that brands don’t have an execution problem, they have a people-model problem at the last mile.”
About Smart Force
Smart Force fixes the last mile by fixing the root problem. India’s first shared sales force, it is designed as a plug-and-play model that delivers to the Feet on Ground, better pay, better talent, and multi-brand exposure—restoring pride, motivation, and performance. With clear career paths and professional management at a level no single brand can achieve on its own. Smart Force is further powered by an AI-enabled app, integrated with pre-loaded routes, beats, and outlet data of 1.5 lac. It drives disciplined daily execution through real-time tracking, intelligent call planning, instant reporting, and actionable MIS—ensuring every market visit translates into measurable outcomes, not just activity. It helps brands reduce go-to-market costs by 30–40% and accelerate market penetration with speed and control.
As competition intensifies across India’s FMCG landscape, and with profit margins shrinking Smart Force enables brands to scale with speed, improve distribution velocity, and achieve predictable market expansion. With this launch, Scale Sherpas reinforces its commitment to building execution-led growth models that help FMCG brands win where it matters most — On The Ground!
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Very good