Daybreak - How a made in Punjab jeera-flavoured soda is popping the Coke-Pepsi-Parle bubble

Episode Date: April 23, 2025

 Here’s the thing about the Indian carbonated beverage market – for decades now it has been a two, sometimes three horse race dominated by everyone’s favourite black coloured colas. Pepsi, Coca Cola and Thums Up. But in the last year or so, a 160-ml bottle of cumin-flavoured soda has managed to do what very few bottled beverages could. It has challenged the Indian beverage industry’s holy trifecta – the Coca-Cola-Pepsi-Parle Agro trio. The crazy thing is, this isn’t some massive global brand that has just entered the Indian market. It’s a seven year old desi brand launched by three cousins in Punjab that was largely unknown until about a year ago. We are talking about Lahori Zeera. Tune in. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of The Ken, India’s first subscriber-only business news platform. Subscribe for more exclusive, deeply-reported, and analytical business stories.

Hi, this is Rohan Dharma Kumar. If you've heard any of the Ken's podcasts, you've probably heard me, my interruptions, my analogies, and my contrarian takes on most topics. And you might rightly be wondering why am I interrupting this episode too. It's for a special announcement. For the last few months, I and Sita Ramon Ganeshan, my colleague and the Ken's deputy editor, have been working on an ambitious new podcast. It's called Intermission.

We want to tell the secret sauce stories of India's greatest companies. Stories of how they were born, how they fought to survive, how they build their organizations and culture, how they manage to innovate and thrive over decades, and most importantly, how they're poised today. To do that, Sita and I have been reading books, poring over reports, going through financial statements, digging up archives, and talking to dozens of people. And if that wasn't enough, we also decided to throw in video into the mix. Yes, you heard that right. Intermission has also had to find its footing in the world of multi-camera shoots in professional studios, laborious editing, and extensive post-production. Sita and I are still reeling from the intensity of our first studio recording.

Intermission launches on March 23rd. To get alert, as soon as we release our first video. episode, please follow intermission on Spotify and Apple Podcast or subscribe to the Ken's YouTube channel. You can find all of the links at the ken.com slash I am. With that, back to your episode. Here's the thing about the Indian carbonated beverage market. For decades now, it's been a two, sometimes three horse race dominated by everyone's favorite black colored colas, Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and thumbs up. But in the last year or so, a 160ml bottle of cumin-flavored soda

has managed to do what very few bottle beverages could. It has challenged the Indian beverage industry's holy trifecta, the Coca-Cola Pepsi-Agro Trio. The crazy thing is, this isn't some massive global brand that has just entered the Indian market. It's actually a 7-year-old Desi brand launched by three cousins in Punjab

that was largely unknown until just about a year ago. I'm talking about a year ago. I'm talking about Lahori jira. This is a brand that was born out of an Indian kitchen. Actually, it happened that in one of their family gatherings, Nikhil Doda, who is one of the co-founders of the company, was very interested in cooking and things related to culinary. And they had just after a family gathering prepared, like, you know,

this drink with all ingredients at home, which was like pink salt, which is called Lahori. and in the northern part of India, and, you know, jira and basically ginger and all of the natural ingredients that are available at home. And that drink became a hit in their family. And then these cousins, they decided to launch this as a product and then started their brand. That's my colleague DVLS Pranati.

She spoke to the founders of Lahore recently to understand how they managed to not just break into this particularly different market, but also establish itself as a real, legitimate. Challenger. So, their revenue grew by 50% in FY24 to like 312 crores. And in the same period from FY23 to FY24, their profits tripled. Like from 8 crores, they made almost 23 crores in FY24, just in profit. And by the way, this company has been profitable since they've been launched. So that is something which most beverage companies in India, You know, being profitable since day one, also being profitable on a product that is like the smallest amount.

Like, it's like 10 rupees. Now, it's not like Lahori Jira was the first company to offer a jira-based drink. They've been around forever. But mainly were offered by smaller regional players. Think Bindu Jira in Karnatica or the century-old socio-hajuri and daavat in Gujarat, even Jiru in Maharashtra. There are a bunch of different examples. all of which have their own loyal customer bases. But none of them have been able to exit state borders quite how Lahoree jira has.

It's currently selling across 15 different states and is growing really, really fast. It seems to have hacked the formula. But the thing is, for it to really take things to the next level and go national, it'll have to do what no jira soda has done before. Hello and welcome to Daybreak, a business podcast from the Ken. I'm your host Rahil Philippos and I don't chase the news cycle. Instead, every day of the week, my colleagues Nikda Sharma and I will come to you with one business story that is worth understanding and worth your time. Today is Wednesday, the 23rd of April.

When Pranati spoke to one of the founders of Lahori Jira, Sorab Mungal, he said something interesting. He said that the opportunity for Lahori lies in the fact that Kola is an acquired taste for Indians. According to him, it just doesn't come quite naturally to us. The Indian taste bud actually seeks masala. If you go to a random local highway or daba, they usually have this thing where they sell thumbs up or cocoa with masala, which is like the jira masala and chatt masala and things like that. And then they call it like masala thumbs up or masala Pepsi or masala coke or something like that.

That is what ignited the Lahoree spark. The hypothesis was simple. India has several cuisines, but one thread binds them together, and that is the use of traditional spices. Between 2017 and today, the company has gone from being a small-scale operation bottling just about 96,000 units a day, to now moving 5 million bottles daily. Now, there was a gap in the north where there was no brand that was, you know, dominating or no brand that was doing jira drinks to be very specific. And if you look at places like Punjab, these drinks are actually very common in the households. And not having a brand was what Lahore capitalized on.

Not having a jira brand to be specific in the north was what they decided to capitalize on. Also because they're all from Punjab. So for them starting there seemed like a lot more natural than starting off anywhere else in India. Thanks to Lahori's success, we've seen a surge in jira flavour. products from a bunch of different brands. For instance, in 2024, Palai Agro, which owns fruity, api-fiz and the likes,

relaunched Dishoum, which is a jira-flavored carbonated drink nationwide. Earlier, it was only available in rural and small-town markets. Then you have Bisleri, which is also a significant player in the package-drinking water segment. It went ahead and launched something called spicy jira.

Interestingly, these two brands are owned by brothers. Now, thanks to this influx of players, the market size of the jira masala drink segment has grown to about 3,000 crore rupees. It was just 50 crore rupees in 2017 when Lahuri jira was launched. But the thing is, most other new age beverage companies haven't had the same success quite as quickly as this one. If you look at a comparative brand, like, you know, say paperboat. Paperboat also started off with like, you know, this whole concept of nostalgia. And like, you know, drinks or beverages based on our chivalry.

childhood, like, you know, Ampana and things like that. So even paperboard, like, you know, did all those kind of drinks. But that company since 2013, they touched 500 crores only in FY23. So, it's the time period, you know, if you look at the number of years. In a shorter period of time, Lahori has been able to do the same thing that its competitors have done in a longer period of time. Now, there are multiple things Lahori has going for it. According to Munjal, it's the fact that,

Jira is their USP. Sure, it has a few other products like Shikanji and Nimbu and Imli Banta, but these make up merely 10 to 15% of the brand's revenue. Munjal says that in FMCG, it's better to have fewer SKUs doing more sales than more SKUs doing less sales. So it has focus going for it. But that's not all. And also, they started out with their own manufacturing.

Like they, unlike, you know, say like a co-exam. Coca-Cola that has like a Rimjim or like a Pali Agro that has a Dishuam, all of these brands are very big. They work with a lot of third-party manufacturers and then they get their product made. Now the thing with Lahori is that they have an in-house manufacturer and they have completely vertically integrated their business in such a way that they have complete control over the supply chain that they are taking care of. Starting from the making of the product till the packaging and like shipping, they are in control of everything.

This always works in any manufacturing sector. That still doesn't explain how this band of cousins was able to build a profitable business around a 10-rupy product. You see, Lahori's approach to that is simple. Their idea is selling millions of bottles. Munjar pointed out that in any space with cut-throat competition, Volume is the one thing that really, really helps. People are buying it a lot. Also because Lahore is selling individual bottles of 10 rupees

only in local Kirana stores. You will not find a single bottle of Lahori in any supermarket or anywhere except for if you go in like a very local and small town Kirana stores. But on their website and on e-commerce store, platforms on every like Amazon Blinket anywhere you go and see, Lahori will be sold only in a box of 24. It also bypassed traditional distributor networks in its early years by selling directly to retailers.

In the process, it ended up earning brand loyalty with these retailers. So today it is able to sell the drink through 2000 distributors. Now, that is a formidable network compared to a bunch of regional competitors. Like take Jiru for instance, which, eight years in, works with only 1300 distributors. But Lahoree still has a couple major hurdles to overcome before it becomes a truly national brand. First is the fact that this is at the end of the day a highly fragmented market. Now, Lahore has managed to plug a blatant northern India-shaped gap in the market, which is no joke.

North India is a tough place to launch a beverage business. The scorching summers increase refrigeration costs, while freezing winters, witness minimal consumption. And then, of course, there is the added headache of power cuts. Now, to widen its footprint, the company is expanding its operations to the eastern and western parts of the country. But the south? Well, that is a whole other ballgame.

Every region has like a specific taste, right? Like, you know, the taste of something like curry keeps changing every 100 kilometres in India. Something like the flavour of a jira drink can change even faster and shorter, distances, right? And also, Bindu has been there for such a long time, so it's an acquired taste for people in the South. So, getting people to adapt or trying a new product will become very difficult in a region like this.

If they are able to crack that, then they'll be able to do a much better business, but now they have no presence in the South at all. But the growth of the larger jira beverage market in the last few years has been a good sign for the brand. An analyst Pranati spoke to said this trend could, continue, especially because for a lot of people, this isn't just another refreshing beverage. It's an after-meal drink that's believed to also help with digestion. All things considered, Lahori jira's present success is a refreshing reminder that Indian

consumers could crave something apart from the same old Western soft drinks. The humble jira soda is proof that sometimes tradition is the best disruptor. Daybreak is produced from the newsroom of the Ken, India's first subscriber. Focused Business News platform. What you're listening to is just a small sample of our subscriber-only offerings. A full subscription unlocks daily long-form feature stories, newsletters and podcast extras. Head to the ken.com and click on the red subscribe button on the top of the website. Today's episode was hosted by Rahil Filippo's produced by me, Snikda Sharma, and edited by Rajiv Sien.