Bayer CropScience CEO Remains Cautious Over FY26 Outlook Despite Strong Market Potential In India
The company’s MD and CEO, Simon-Thorsten Wiebusch, described Indian agriculture as a sector with immense potential, which is often underestimated.
Bayer CropScience Ltd., a leading player in India’s agricultural sector, is cautiously optimistic about the outlook for FY26, driven by above-average monsoons and the market’s untapped potential.
Addressing the outlook for the current financial year, Simon-Thorsten Wiebusch, MD and CEO of Bayer CropScience, acknowledged a mixed scenario. While the year began on a strong note with an early monsoon boosting the first quarter, the rainfall since then has been inconsistent.
“What we are perceiving at this point is that there are quite erratic rains. The distribution is different from what we would have hoped. September will define the success of the kharif season. The outlook for Rabi is quite positive. We see the dams being quite nicely filled, generally commodity prices for farmers, not too bad,” he said during a conversation with NDTV Profit on Tuesday.
He described Indian agriculture as a sector with immense potential, which is often underestimated.
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“What's often underestimated is how much potential there is still to grow. The probability of success in India is much, much higher in many other countries because it is not a market that has already penetrated to the core,” the top executive noted.
However, Wiebusch cautioned that external factors beyond the traditional monsoon patterns are increasingly influencing the sector's performance.
“Now, does it mean that every quarter is going to be great or that every year is going to be growth? That's a little bit where one needs to watch and needs to very much also deal with the external environment,” he said.
Regarding industry-wide concerns about pressure on gross margins, particularly from glyphosate pricing, Wiebusch suggested that the worst may be over.
"We've really cycled through a negative cycle and will at least have hit the bottom in terms of gross margins on the chemical side," he said.
The top executive noted that external factors, such as industrial overcapacity in China, could still impact the Indian market.
