The home-grown beverage brand has turned a delayed Independence Day media takeover into a marketing statement around Indian identity and the changing soft-drink market.
New Delhi: Home-grown beverage brand Lahori Zeera is positioning itself as a distinctly Indian alternative to multinational cola brands with its latest advertising campaign, built around the idea of making “thanda” desi again.
The brand took over The Times of India on August 23 with messaging including “Apna Desi Thanda” and “The Thanda of India”, staking a claim to a category historically dominated by multinational beverage companies in both advertising and retail.
The campaign also draws on the cultural significance of the word “Thanda” in Indian advertising. Coca-Cola popularised the expression through its long-running “Thanda Matlab Coca-Cola” campaign. Lahori Zeera’s latest communication uses the same everyday cultural association while presenting a home-grown proposition.
From Independence Day plan to campaign narrative
According to Lahori Zeera co-founder and CEO Saurabh Munjal, the campaign was initially planned as an Independence Day media takeover on August 15 across Hindi-speaking markets.
However, the brand faced intense competition for Independence Day advertising inventory, with several companies targeting the same date. Rising media rates eventually forced Lahori Zeera to move its takeover to August 23.
Rather than treating the change as a setback, the company incorporated it into the campaign narrative.
Munjal said the brand had effectively been “priced out and crowded out” of the August 15 inventory. He argued that the revised date reinforced the campaign’s broader message that being Indian is not limited to a single day of celebration.
The strategy also turns the media-buying challenge itself into a marketing hook, with Munjal highlighting the contrast between securing the date a brand wants and choosing the date it can afford.
Home-grown brands gain ground
Lahori Zeera’s positioning comes amid increasing competition in India’s carbonated beverage market, where domestic brands are seeking to challenge the dominance of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo.
In November 2025 that newer soft-drink brands, led by Reliance Consumer Products’ Campa and Lahori Zeera, had nearly doubled their combined market share to around 15% during January-September 2025. During the same period, the combined share of Coca-Cola and PepsiCo declined to about 85% from 93%.
The shift has created greater space for Indian beverage brands to compete on pricing, local flavour profiles and cultural positioning.
For Lahori Zeera, the latest campaign combines those themes by framing “desi thanda” as an everyday Indian choice rather than simply an Independence Day proposition.
The campaign ultimately seeks to make Lahori Zeera part of a larger shift in India’s beverage market—one in which homegrown brands are increasingly challenging multinational players not just on distribution and price, but also on cultural relevance.