Britannia’s CEO argues that the price cuts that helped Campa shake up soft drinks won’t work in a market built on ₹5 and ₹10 packs.
Reliance has used Campa to take on Coca-Cola and PepsiCo. Now it wants a share of India’s biscuit market, and the market leader doesn’t think the same approach will work.
Britannia Industries CEO and Managing Director Rakshit Hargave told analysts on Saturday that biscuits run on very different pricing than soft drinks. He said this will make it hard for Reliance to repeat the disruption it caused in the cola market.
Hargave’s argument is simple. In cola, Reliance could cut ₹5 or ₹10 off a bottle and shoppers would notice. In biscuits, much of the market already sells at ₹5 and ₹10. When the whole pack costs that little, there isn’t much room to cut the price without losing money.
Earlier this month, Reliance Consumer Products Ltd (RCPL) entered the biscuit market with its own brand, Independence. It launched 28 products in Tamil Nadu and plans to take the brand across India.
Hargave said the new range looks a lot like the classic biscuits already on store shelves. He also pointed out that Tamil Nadu is a big market for Britannia too. He said the company will study Reliance’s strategy closely.
Hargave called the Mukesh Ambani-led group a “very respectable competition.” He did not sound worried, though. He said Britannia has strong defences in the market and clear plans to keep growing, and that it will watch how the competition develops.
The Campa story
Reliance has reason to feel confident. It entered beverages in August 2022 by buying Campa Cola, and the brand now has a double-digit share in key markets. In the first quarter, Campa brought in ₹2,900 crore in sales. That was almost a third of RCPL’s total revenue and close to half of what the brand sold in all of FY26.
Reliance plans to launch Campa in aluminium cans by the end of this month. The cans are already on sale in Australia through Goodness Group, which Reliance bought in February.
Reliance has already shown it can shake up a market dominated by global giants. The biscuit market will test whether that works when a product costs only ₹5.