Parksons Packaging: Thinking Out of the Box

The Mumbai-based firm, which manufactures attractive cartons for top brands, has seen a nearly 10-fold increase in revenues in the past decade.

- Salil Panchal

When you fill your shopping cart with the attractively packaged products neatly stacked on the shelves of malls, it’s unlikely that you have paid attention to their thoughtfully created cartons. Mumbai-based Parksons Packaging is responsible for many of those, and has been in the business for the last 20 years. Parksons manufactures and designs the cartons. In some cases, it even provides ‘keyline’ drawings to the client’s graphics team.

From its four factories across India—one each in Daman and Chakan (Pune) and two in Pantnagar (Uttarakhand)—Parksons manufactures 10 million packs daily for food and beverages, pharmaceuticals and personal care products. For instance, all Starbucks takeaway boxes in India are made by Parksons and several whiskey/ wine brands are kept safe and pure in litho-laminated cartons manufactured by the company. It also manufactures clamshells and tray cartons for McDonald’s in India.

Its promoters, the Kejriwal family, claim that Parksons grew at 20 percent CAGR (compound annual growth rate) over the past five years, which is more than double the industry average of nine percent. And its rapid expansion and impressive clientele list has not gone unnoticed.

Private equity player Chrys Capital India picked up a 21 percent stake in Parksons in 2006. They exited the firm in early 2015 with Kedaara Capital Advisors buying ChrysCapital’s stake and a little more. Kedaara holds a 30-35 percent stake in Parksons, for an investment of Rs 200 crore. The majority is held by the promoters.

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