Suffering from success: Can Reliance’s Campa keep up with demand?

Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. Mumbai: In 1983, a teenaged Salman Khan boarded a yacht off the Andaman Islands with a group of young, happening folks and a red icebox filled with chilled glass bottles of Campa Cola. They pitch tents on a pristine beach, chanting ‘Campa Cola’ to an electric guitar.

The ad exemplified all that was cool about the iconic soft drink of the 1980s; it was the drink of choice for the cool, urban rich, who sang in English and partied at sea like the Europeans. That was until Pepsi and Coca Cola re-entered India in 1989 and 1993, respectively, effectively ending the era of homegrown soft drink brands. Forty years later, everything has changed.

Campa Cola is now just ‘Campa’. It was relaunched in 2023 by Reliance Consumer Products, Reliance Industries’ fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) arm. The party boats in the ads have made way for traditional festivals, desi Indian sounds, and cheering cricket stadiums, with ordinary people sharing plastic bottles of Campa to the tagline ‘Naye India Ka Apna Thanda’ (New India’s own cold drink).

The son-of-the-soil, nationalist rebranding appears to have worked. Campa and Independence, Reliance’s packaged water and consumer staples brand, are both expected to close FY25 with ₹1,000 crore revenue each, according to analysts tracking the company and a senior industry executive briefed on the details, who did not want to be named. “Crossing the 1,000 crore mark is no mean feat in just a year and half," the executive told Mint.

“Campa is already sold out for the summer." Campa’s success is starting to weigh on its longstanding rivals, analysts tracking the company say. Distributors and wholesalers of the brand that Mint spoke with agree. They requested