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India’s richest man is stepping up a battle against Coca-Cola and Pepsi for the country’s fizzy drinks market with a 50-year-old brand last popular when the country’s economy was largely shut off to foreign business.
Mukesh Ambani’s conglomerate Reliance Industries has launched a price war to promote Campa Cola, leaning on nationalist nostalgia to appeal to Indian consumers at a time of rising tensions between New Delhi and Washington.
The drink, which Reliance debuted three years ago with a price of Rs10 — about half that of rivals at the time — now has a 7 per cent market share in India, up from about 2 per cent in 2024, estimates analytics researcher GlobalData. Since then, Coca-Cola and Pepsi have introduced discounts on their drinks.
Reliance wants to increase its market share to 25 per cent over the next three years, according to a person with knowledge of the company’s targets. “The ambition is to be a national brand,” said the person. “The next step of growth is really to increase availability and capacity building.”
Campa Cola generated revenue of about Rs10bn ($111mn) in the financial year through March 2025, representing roughly a tenth of Reliance’s fast-moving consumer goods revenue.
Ambani has a history of ruthlessly disrupting entire sectors, using the vast proceeds from his family’s oil and chemicals empire to wage sustained price wars against rivals.
Reliance upended India’s telecoms market a decade ago after launching ultra-cheap mobile services through its network Jio Infocomm, triggering a wave of consolidation that ultimately left the company as the country’s largest operator.
“Just on the back of pricing they made Jio a household name,” said Lloyd Mathias, an angel investor and former Pepsi executive in India. “So the fear within Coke and Pepsi is that Reliance will continue to play this game and possibly over two years almost double their scale.”
Reliance declined to comment. Coca-Cola and Pepsi did not respond to a request for comment.
The soft drink is just one piece of a longer-term strategy by Ambani’s conglomerate to wean itself away from its dependence on petrochemicals that account for more than half its revenue.
Campa Cola’s origins date back to 1977, when Coca-Cola’s New Delhi-based bottling partner, Pure Drinks Group, launched the soda after Coke exited the country following a government mandate to dilute its equity stake and reveal its secret recipe.
But Campa Cola began to disappear from shelves after India liberalised its markets in the 1990s, allowing Coca-Cola and Pepsi to return with forceful marketing and sophisticated distribution networks.
The brand’s fortunes turned when Reliance acquired Campa Cola from Pure Drinks in 2022, giving Ambani an opportunity to push into India’s soft drinks sector. Reliance has leaned into Campa Cola’s nationalistic nostalgia, keeping its original tag line, “The Great Indian Taste”, while also launching new lemon and orange flavours.
Ambani’s daughter Isha, who heads up Reliance Retail, said in August that Campa Cola was “breaking a 30-year [multinational] duopoly” and was part of a “long-term ambition to become India’s largest FMCG company with a global presence”.
Reliance has already begun taking Campa Cola overseas to countries including the UAE, Sri Lanka and Nepal.
Volume growth of carbonated soft drinks in India has expanded more than 15 per cent annually in the past decade, yet market penetration remains below 40 per cent as of 2024, according to estimates from consultancy Bain & Company.
“Per capita consumption in India is still among the lowest in the world, so there is massive headroom for growth,” said Kiran Mahasuar, assistant professor at the S.P. Jain Institute of Management & Research.
But he cautioned that the “bulk of consumers” are Millennials and Gen Z Indians. “They have no nostalgic acquaintance with Campa Cola,” he said. “They have grown up with Coke and Pepsi.”
