The new cola wars: Reliance rides IPL and predatory pricing to Campa glory

Reliance Industries is doing to India’s ~$9-billion soft drinks market what it did to telecom and OTT streaming—disrupting it Rs 10 at a time.

The Mukesh Ambani-owned conglomerate, which acquired storied cola brand ‘Campa’ for a paltry Rs 22 crore from Pure Drinks Group and relaunched it in 2023, has turned Campa into a Rs 1,000-crore beverage juggernaut in less than two years.

This has come on the back of the phenomenal success of Campa’s 200 ml PET bottle. Priced at just Rs 10, it has undercut the market and put the two “MNC colas”—Coke and Pepsi—in a fix. So much so that Coca-Cola’s Global President and CFO John Murphy told the media in January that India’s local beverage brands were doing "a darn good job” when asked to comment on Campa’s disruptive growth.

What Campa has managed to do, despite its presence in only select markets, including Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Bihar, UP, and a few cities in the East, is restrict the ability of the MNC colas to slash their prices even if they wanted to, an FMCG brand analyst told The CapTable. “Every time either Coke or Pepsi wants to lower its price, there is resistance in the market from within their own dealer networks as their margins are hit. And when the most important middleman is against you, you can't do too much,” he said, adding that Campa, which is an all-new cola for these dealers, “faces no latent disgruntlement and is gaining traction in this bargain”.

“The proof of concept has been laid out, now it’s a question of Reliance going out to widen the market and capture each one of the bottler destinations,” the analyst added.

Campa’s biggest public splash came in February this year when it replaced Thums Up (a Coca-Cola brand) as IPL 2025’s co-presenting sponsor, coughing up north of Rs 200 crore for the privilege. The ‘co-presenting’ category is regarded as the most premium sponsorship slot in IPL, right after the title sponsorship (currently held by TATA).