Indian FMCG brands rethink last mile execution as Smart Force by Scale Sherpas enters the market

Scale Sherpas Managing Director, Anjana Ghosh, outlines how the shared field force supports rapid multi city expansion

Indian FMCG brands are reassessing how they execute at the last mile as distribution complexity increases across General Trade and Modern Trade channels. Addressing this challenge, Scale Sherpas has introduced Smart Force, a shared field force model designed to help brands expand across multiple cities with speed and operational control.
India’s FMCG market, valued at over ₹9 lakh crore, continues to rely heavily on General Trade, which contributes close to 65 percent of sales through more than 6.5 million kirana stores. While digital platforms and strong product innovation have enabled scale, many brands face execution gaps as they grow. These gaps often emerge in the form of fragmented distributor coordination, incomplete outlet coverage data, and rising costs associated with maintaining in house sales teams.

Smart Force has been developed to address these issues through a ready to deploy execution framework. The model brings together shared on ground sales teams, pre mapped routes, and standardised processes, allowing brands to activate simultaneously across multiple markets without building large internal field organisations. According to the company, this approach helps reduce duplication, improve data consistency, and enable faster responses to market level challenges.
With Smart Force, brands are able to shorten market entry timelines from the traditional six to nine months to as little as 45 days. The model is also positioned to improve numeric distribution through disciplined secondary sales execution while reducing go to market costs by up to 40 percent compared to conventional in house structures.

The launch is led by Anjana Ghosh, Managing Director at Scale Sherpas and a former director at Bisleri, who brings decades of experience in building and scaling sales and distribution networks across Indian FMCG markets. She said that many brands continue to struggle not because of strategy gaps, but due to weaknesses in their last mile people model.
“Brands do not need another strategy framework. They need execution that works consistently on the ground,” said Anjana Ghosh. She added that last mile sales teams are often disengaged and invisible to leadership, making it difficult to drive accountability, motivation, and productivity at scale. According to her, Smart Force has been designed as an execution first solution that addresses these structural challenges directly.

Smart Force is supported by an AI enabled application with pre loaded route plans, beats, and outlet data covering 1.5 lakh locations. The system enables real time tracking, intelligent call planning, instant reporting, and actionable management information systems, ensuring that daily market activity translates into measurable outcomes.
As competition intensifies and margins tighten across the FMCG sector, shared execution models such as Smart Force are emerging as a viable alternative for brands seeking predictable and scalable growth. Through this launch, Scale Sherpas aims to support FMCG companies in strengthening distribution velocity, improving execution discipline, and achieving faster market expansion.

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