In January, during a media round-table, a senior executive of Coca-Cola Co said that local players like Campa Cola are doing a “pretty good job” in the Indian market, challenging the global beverage major to be at its best. Campa Cola, a drink that an earlier generation grew up with, and rather dormant in later years, has become a challenger brand in a fast-growing market for beverages.
Campa was bought by Reliance Consumer Products in 2022 and relaunched a year later at the lowest price point of ₹10 for 200 ml in PET bottles, disrupting the market and forcing rivals to cut prices to stay in the game. By sponsoring IPL 2025 and a few teams, the brand gained tremendous recall and is already valued at ₹1,000 crore — scorching growth in just two years from relaunch. Campa now has 15-20 variants, ranging from nectar to glucose-based, energy, and sports drinks.
With an investment of over ₹3,000 crore in the brand so far, and revenues of ₹11,500 crore in FY24-25, Reliance Consumer is disrupting the market for not just beverages but also a whole swathe of categories it has entered — from staples and confectionery to shampoos and detergents, and home care and personal care, fulfilling Reliance supremo Mukesh Ambani’s vision of offering products of “global quality at Indian prices”. To execute his vision, Ambani roped in T Krishna Kumar — KK, a moniker he’s popularly known by — at the end of FY20-21, just after the latter had retired as Chairman of Coca-Cola India.
Ambani’s ask was to build a full-scale consumer products business ground-up for Reliance. Funds, of course, would not be a constraint. The brief was to build a brand ecosystem that not only meets the needs of India’s diverse consumer base but also reflects its aspirations. In short, deliver in consumer goods what Jio did in the telecom business!
An old hand at the consumer goods business, with stints in multiple companies, KK had planned a quiet retirement, dabbling in agriculture and community service in his village in a quiet corner of Tamil Nadu. That had to wait, now that Ambani had set a challenge and KK was ready to pick up the gauntlet.
The first task was to build a team, which comprised veterans of the FMCG industry — Asim Parekh, also earlier with Coca-Cola, for logistics; Amit Chakraborty as R&D head; Ashutosh Goyal, a Coke-Amazon veteran, as CFO; Umesh Malik, head of procurement; Tapas Mondal, head of international business; and Ketan Mody as COO. Except for Mody, the team members were all retired or close to retirement, and they all boasted decades of experience across leading brands and market understanding.
Beginning as a two-man office in Yelahanka, Bengaluru, Reliance Consumer has rapidly scaled up under the watch of these over-60 retirees. Observers say that the company has relied on a three-pronged strategy: acquire, at a reasonable price, brands that are either languishing or in debt, but have residual brand equity, and relaunch them after contemporising and reformulating them; organically build brands from scratch in areas where Reliance has strengths; and sew up joint ventures for technical expertise.
Revival mode
In the past two years, RCP has acquired over 10 hoary Indian brands such as Ravalgaon confectionery, Velvette shampoo, Campa beverages, and SIL Foods.
For new product launches, the company identifies white spaces, undertakes projects post market research, and, based on positive feedback, scales up rapidly. It’s here that its R&D lab, a sprawling 80,000-plus sq ft, set-up at Whitefield in Bengaluru, plays a defining role, according to observers.
R&D head Chakraborty, who came with 25 years of experience, worked on building a research-based, consumer-driven R&D ecosystem, upgrading it to acquire the speed and nimbleness that Reliance demanded. A product launch entailing six months’ work — from concept stage to pilots, corrections and launch — was achieved in three or even two months, marking a 40 per cent saving on time. The Reliance research lab, formerly a Jio call centre, employs over 125 biotechnologists. The reformulation of Campa beverages was done at this lab.
According to sources, the RCPL lab has in-house libraries of all chemicals, reagents, and flavours, and can actually create about 90 per cent of the products from them. So, everything is geared for speed-to-market. When Reliance marketers wanted to quickly launch a jeera variant of Campa, the lab managed to formulate, test and launch it in just three months.
The lab can develop all categories of FMCG — from biscuits to snacks, noodles, bubble gum, ice creams, and chocolates in foods, to soap bars, powders, and liquids to body lotions in the home and personal care segment. The lab can handle a scale trial of 50-100 kg. A consumer centre pools feedback at every stage of development before large-scale tests, those in the know say.
Joint venture route
RCPL took a stake in Lotus chocolates to launch a range of chocolates and sewed up alliances with Sri Lankan brands Maliban (for biscuits) and Elephant House (for drinks). In Chennai, it partnered with popular local brand Grand Sweets to launch a range of snacks under its brand Masti Oye. RCPL has also co-created a sports hydration drink, Spinner, with Sri Lankan cricketer Muthiah Muralitharan, at a hyper-competitive price point of ₹10 for 150 ml.
Close observers of the Reliance FMCG model say its offers good quality while keeping prices in check. Though not the lowest prices in the market, the quality-to-price equation is possibly the best in the market, they say. An integrated supply chain is under development, where every raw material is bought at lower prices and processed to take it to the next level.
This integration is helping keep prices in check. RCPL also works on pretty low overheads and, over a period of time, it could well match the percentage profitability of other FMCG companies. The CEO of a large foods company says RCPL has already become an established player in soft drinks and, with its deep pockets, will be able to impact high-gross-margin categories. Companies that operate with lower gross margins and tight cost structures will be relatively safer from RCPL’s foray into a wide swathe of categories.
Portfolio power
RCPL is rapidly extending the breadth of its portfolio. While in beverages it already has a full portfolio, in staples, snacks, biscuits and confectionery, its portfolio ranges from 30 per cent to 80 per cent, even as it targets scaling up nationally quickly. Its over 47 brands are now distributed to over one million outlets, which it aims to increaseto five million outlets.
With 200-plus strategic supply partners, over 1,500 SKUs, 3,200 distributors, and over 1,200 employees, RCPL has, in a couple of years, morphed from a two-man office kickstarted by a 60-plus duo into a gigantic enterprise of a scale that most other companies have taken decades to achieve. The next five years could see massive expansion with new manufacturing hubs, deeper digital integration, and even global forays — its brands are already present in West Asia. RCPL, which may well be spun off as a separate company, aims not just to participate in the Indian consumption story but lead it.