Four guided numbers. We lock the one in rupees.

We lock a binary: Marico's reported consolidated revenue for fiscal 2027 is INR 14,000 crore or higher. Confidence 92%.

The company's stated FY2027 goal is to cross INR 15,000 crore. Our threshold sits INR 1,000 crore, about 6.7%, below it. Q1 revenue of INR 3,957 crore annualises to roughly INR 15,800 crore, so the lock clears on the existing run rate with room.

Marico gave FY2027 guidance on four separate dimensions at once: double-digit revenue growth crossing INR 15,000 crore; high-teen EBITDA growth; high single-digit volume growth in the India business; and mid-teens constant-currency growth internationally. That is unusually generous disclosure, and it creates a choice rather than an answer.

Three of those four are relative — growth rates whose resolution depends on a base, or descriptive phrases like high-teen and mid-teens that have to be interpreted before they can be scored. This series has locked that kind of guidance before, at P-313 on Sun Pharma's high single digits and P-260 on DBS, and it works, but it is always the weaker anchor.

The revenue goal is different. INR 15,000 crore is an absolute rupee figure attached to a named financial year, which under the test set out at P-331 in this same tranche makes it anchorable regardless of whether the company calls it guidance or a goal. It resolves against a single number in the annual accounts with nothing to interpret.

So the lock takes the absolute figure and the criterion rules out the other three. Not because they are unreliable, but because when a company hands you both a rupee number and a percentage, the rupee number is the one that cannot be argued about afterwards.

Marico's Q1 carried two records: domestic volume growth of 11%, the highest in 20 quarters, and profit growth described as the highest in 28. That is the same shape as Nestlé India at P-329 one tranche ago, whose 25.16% revenue growth was its fastest in forty quarters.

The lesson banked there applies here. A growth rate at a multi-year high is an outlier, and a forward lock anchored to it forecasts the prior-year base rather than the business. P-329 responded by locking the revenue LEVEL rather than the rate, and P-336 does the same — INR 14,000 crore is a quantity of rupees, unaffected by what FY2026 happened to do.

The quality of the quarter supports the floor from underneath. Consolidated EBITDA margin expanded 40 basis points to 20.7% even as advertising and promotional spend rose 25%, which means the volume growth was earned rather than bought at the expense of profitability — the opposite of the Havells pattern at P-334 in this same tranche, where doubled advertising spend compressed margin by 230 basis points.

Sources also disagreed on the profit line, reporting PAT growth as both 25% and 27%, and revenue growth as both 23% and 22.85%. The rupee revenue figures were consistent, which is a second reason the lock sits where it does.

The residual 8% is an input-cost shock in copra or edible oils forcing price action that suppresses volume, or a sharper slowdown in the international business than mid-teens implies.