Reliance Puts ₹8,000 Cr Into Campa Cola to Take on Coke and Pepsi

Mumbai, June 20, 2025 — In a decisive move to disrupt India’s carbonated beverage market, Reliance Retail Ventures Ltd (RRVL), the retail arm of Reliance Industries, has committed ₹8,000 crore to relaunch and scale the once-iconic Indian cola brand, Campa Cola. This aggressive investment represents a direct challenge to the entrenched market dominance of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, and signals Reliance’s intent to secure a significant share of the country’s ₹70,000 crore non-alcoholic beverages industry.

Originally acquired in 2022 from Pure Drinks Group for ₹22 crore, Campa Cola was widely perceived as a symbolic nod to Indian nostalgia. Today, it stands at the centre of Reliance’s strategy to disrupt a category long controlled by multinational incumbents. This is not a heritage revival—it is a calculated, capital-backed effort to reshape the competitive landscape.

Reliance is executing a vertically integrated rollout, encompassing manufacturing, bottling, distribution, and direct-to-consumer retail. New production facilities have been constructed, and existing plants have been repurposed to support the brand’s reintroduction. The company has also partnered with over 50 independent bottlers to enable rapid national distribution, timed to coincide with upcoming festive and summer sales cycles.

The distribution strategy leverages Reliance’s expansive retail ecosystem. Campa Cola is already being stocked across the company’s 17,000+ retail outlets, including Reliance Smart and JioMart, as well as through its B2B kirana supply chain powered by JioMart Partner. This infrastructure advantage allows Reliance to control retail visibility and shelf placement—something few competitors can replicate.

Market analysts suggest that Reliance is aiming to capture between 10% and 15% of India’s carbonated drinks market within three to five years. To achieve this, the company is employing aggressive pricing tactics, undercutting Coca-Cola and PepsiCo by 15–20% in key regions. In rural markets, Campa Cola is being positioned as a “swadeshi” alternative—Indian-made, competitively priced, and aligned with national sentiment.

The product portfolio has already expanded beyond the classic cola variant. Campa Lemon, Campa Orange, and energy drinks have entered the market, with plans underway for ready-to-drink iced teas, hydration beverages, and packaged water. Reliance’s vision is to establish Campa as a comprehensive beverage brand that can compete across multiple segments, rather than as a single-product revival.

Marketing efforts are expected to be extensive and high-impact. Reliance is preparing a broad campaign featuring leading film personalities, Gen-Z influencers, and major sports sponsorships, including a likely presence in the IPL. Promotional content will be amplified across Reliance-owned media platforms, such as Viacom18 and JioCinema, ensuring multi-channel reach and sustained consumer engagement.

Despite the ambitious scope, the company is aware of the challenges ahead. The carbonated drinks category is capital-intensive, logistically complex, and fiercely brand-driven. Coca-Cola and PepsiCo benefit from decades of consumer loyalty, refined supply chains, and embedded distribution networks. To overcome this, Reliance is offering favourable margin structures to local distributors and recruiting regional entrepreneurs as channel partners to accelerate adoption in Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities.

In parallel, Reliance is leveraging its data and technology capabilities to monitor consumption patterns and manage micro-level inventory. Real-time demand insights from its digital platforms are being used to drive efficient logistics and reduce supply-side friction—areas where even global competitors often struggle at scale.

The Campa Cola strategy reflects Reliance’s established formula for market disruption. Similar to its approach with Jio in telecom and Smart Bazaar in retail, the company is combining deep capital deployment with full-stack control of supply and demand levers. If executed effectively, Campa could become the next high-profile success story in Reliance’s consumer business portfolio.

Moreover, this initiative is likely just the beginning. Sources indicate that Reliance is actively exploring further acquisitions in the beverage space, including regional soft drink and juice brands. There are also early signs of investment in sustainable bottling technology and packaging innovation, designed to appeal to environmentally conscious urban consumers and reduce the company’s operational footprint.

As Reliance accelerates its push into the Indian beverage market, the implications are clear. The cola category, once considered a settled battleground between two international giants, is facing its most serious domestic challenge in decades. Whether Campa Cola can convert shelf space into sustained market share remains to be seen—but with scale, strategy, and capital aligned, Reliance has made its intent unmistakable.