Campa Cola Is Back! Reliance Relaunches 50-Year-Old Iconic Beverage Brand Months After Acquisition

Campa Cola, which was a popular soft drink brand in the 1970s and 1980s, fizzed out with the entry of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo

Reliance Industries (RIL) Chairman Mukesh Ambani's conglomerate relaunched Campa Cola, the 50-year-old iconic beverage brand, in a new contemporised avatar as it looks to ramp up its own consumer goods offering to take on competition from Adani, ITC, and Unilever.

Reliance Consumer Products Ltd, the fast-moving consumer goods arm of Reliance Retail, acquired a 50 per cent stake in Gujarat-based carbonated soft drinks and juice maker Sosyo Hajoori Beverages Pvt Ltd. It had previously acquired the Campa brand from Pure Drinks group for a reported Rs 22 crore.

In a statement, Reliance said, "The Campa portfolio will initially include Campa Cola, Campa Lemon, and Campa Orange in the sparkling beverage category." The cold beverage portfolio will initially be available in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana and will be rolled out across the country in stages, the company added.

Campa Cola, which was a popular soft drink brand in the 1970s and 1980s, fizzed out with the entry of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.

Pure Drinks Group was the sole distributor of Coca-Cola in India from 1949 to the 1970s. It launched its own brand Campa Cola in the 1970s, and soon became the market leader in the soft drinks segment. Later on, it introduced Campa Orange, the orange-flavoured aerated drink.

The firm, which had two bottling plants in Mumbai and Delhi, sold the beverages with the slogan 'The Great Indian Taste' but lost business in the 1990s with the opening up of the economy.

According to the Reliance Consumer Products’ statement, it said, the company is bringing "back 'The Great Indian Taste' with Campa". The relaunch of Campa is part of Ambani's bid to accelerate penetration into the nation's rapidly growing consumer goods market with Reliance's own versions of products, ranging from soap and shampoo to cookies and cola.

Reliance Retail owns about two dozen consumer goods brands, including the Good Life and Best Farms ranges of staple foods, such as rice and other grains, Snac Tac snacks, Glimmer cosmetics, Yeah! fizzy drinks and fruit juice label Sosyo.

The launch of Campa portfolio "is in line with the company's strategy to promote homegrown Indian brands that not only have a rich heritage but also boast a deep-rooted connect with Indian consumers due to their unique tastes and flavours", it added. With 50 years of rich heritage, Campa's contemporary cut-through character is set to offer Indian consumers 'The Great Indian Taste' this summer, the statement added.