Note ban shaved `100 crore off our sales: Nestle

FMCG major Nestle on Monday said it has taken Rs 100 crore hit on sales due to demonetisation and the sector will take another six months to overcome the impact of the government's move to scarp old high value notes. "We took an impact in November.

If you look on overall impact, it would be difficult to put it but roughly the last quarter I met a loss of about of a billion on sales (Rs 100 crore) because of demonetisation," said Nestle India Chairman and Managing Director Suresh Narayanan.

"As far as we are concerned, in November we took a hit and December was much better. January has been even better and February is also running fairly good," he said at a roundtable discussion here.

Last November, the government had scrapped Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes, leading to a severe cash crunch in the system. On February 15, Nestle, which follows January-December financial year, had reported a decline of 8.66 per cent in its standalone net profit to Rs 167.31 crore for the fourth quarter, while its net sales was up 16.17 per cent to Rs 2,261.28 crore.

According to Narayanan, the FMCG segment would take at least two more quarters as the lag in demand in not on just the industry only but also on the downstream demands as well.