The market share war between billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Campa Cola, Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo Inc. is creating an unlikely winner in the world’s largest consumer market: refrigerators.
Reliance Industries Ltd.’s consumer goods unit and the American cola giants are on an expansion drive, installing commercial refrigerators in mom-and-pop stores across India. That’s one of the factors driving growth for these so-called visi-coolers, Mohit Sud, group president for Unitary Cooling Products at Blue Star Ltd. told Bloomberg News.“There is a certain tailwind in the segment,” Sud said, adding that the category is growing faster than Blue Star’s annual growth.
A child accompanied by an elder picks a soft drink of his choice inside a shop in Sirsiwala village, Punjab, India, on Aug. 8, 2023.
The market for commercial fridges in India, which includes visi-coolers, is expected to expand to $3.9 billion by 2034, up from $2.8 billion in 2025, according to the IMARC Group.India’s latest round of cola wars is revving up a decades-old marketing strategy to grab buyer interest: control the fridge to bolster sales. Competition in India’s fast-expanding beverage market has intensified after three decades as Reliance Consumer Products Ltd.’s 10-rupee ($0.1) fizzy drink Campa disrupted the market dominated by the American soda giants.It also fueled a parallel boom for refrigerator makers from Blue Star and Tata Group’s Voltas Ltd. to global names such as Haier Appliances India Pvt. and closely held Western Refrigeration Pvt.. Retail outlets keep beverages prominently displayed in these glass-door display units that act as marketing and distribution tools for adding market share.“We are adding about close to half a million and maybe more chilling equipment, which is between Campa, Coke and ourselves,” Ravi Jaipuria, chairman at PepsiCo’s India bottler Varun Beverages Ltd., said at an earnings call last week. On top of this, the individual outlets are buying 400,000 to 500,000 coolers on their own, he added.‘Very Aggressive’
