Global ambitions for Reliance Retail-owned Campa Cola; Brand to enter more international markets

At the 46th Annual General Meeting (AGM) of Reliance Industries, billionaire Mukesh Ambani stated the conglomerate’s plans to take Campa Cola global, beginning with the rest of Asia and then Africa.

In August 2022, Campa Cola was acquired by Reliance Consumer Products, the FMCG arm of Reliance Retail Ventures from Pure Drinks Group for Rs22 crore. The brand was re-launched in three flavours - Campa Cola, Campa Lemon and Campa Orange. To begin with, Reliance Industries has started rolling out the brand in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.

In the 1970s, Delhi-based Pure Drinks Group, which was considered a pioneer in the soft drinks industry, came up with a soft drink brand, Campa. It was the same group that had, in 1949, laid the carpet for Coca-Cola's entry into India and had been its manufacturer and distributor. But the journey of Coca-Cola was short-lived.

In 1977, Coca-Cola was asked to wind up its operations when it refused to follow the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. This Act mandated foreign players to partner with an Indian entity, which would have meant revealing their secret recipe. The person who uprooted the brand from its roots was the former industry minister in the Morarji Desai government, George Mathew Fernandes.

As Coca-Cola exited in the 1970s, it proved a golden opportunity for Pure Drinks' Campa. When Coca-Cola re-entered India in 1993 during the period of liberalisation, Campa Cola found survival difficult.