Thums Up, a locally produced soft drink has risen to become a billion-dollar brand in India, according to the brand’s owner, The Coca-Cola Company, in its October-December 2021 earnings report. “Our local thumbs up brand became a billion-dollar brand in India, driven by focus marketing and execution plans,” James Quincey, Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, said on an earnings call.
Thums Up, India’s most popular cola brand was purchased by Coca-Cola in 1993 for $60 million from Ramesh Chauhan’s Parle, along with Limca, Citra, Gold Spot, and Maaza. Coca-Cola said its unit case volume climbed 11 percent in the Asia Pacific market, which includes India, as it announced a 17 percent gain in net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2021.
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“Growth was driven by China, India and the Philippines, partially offset by pressure in Australia due to the impact of the pandemic,” it stated.
The history of Thums Up
In India, the company’s activities to develop an omnichannel presence and marketing campaigns around important occasions by exploiting festivals and passion points through occasion-led marketing and integrated execution resulted in a 30 percent sequential increase in transactions for the quarter.
The brand, which was launched in 1977 by Parle to fill in the gap in India’s fizzy drinks market, has seen meteoric growth in popularity. Coca-Cola (which had been in India since the 1950s) abandoned the Indian market after the Foreign Exchange Regulation Act (FERA) was implemented in 1974, mandating foreign corporations to decrease their ownership position in Indian operations.
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Ramesh Chauhan took advantage of this gap to establish Thums Up, a competitor to popular brands like Campa Cola and Double Seven. Thums Up became India’s top fizzy drink brand because of its great distribution.

When Coke re-entered India in 1993, Thums Up had an estimated 85 percent market share. Thums Up and Pepsi were now Coke’s main competitors. In an attempt to compete with Pepsi, it purchased Thums Up and other brands from Parle Bisleri in 1993. Parle had a 60 percent market share in India’s soft drink sector at the time.
“Inheriting these brands, plus their franchise system and distribution infrastructure, gave us market leadership on day one. It gave us a profitable business to build on. The 55 bottlers in the Parle system would continue to bottle the brands they were already selling and have the opportunity to produce Coca-Cola brands,” former Coca-Cola India CEO Jay Raja said in a 2013 company post on Coke’s history in India.
According to consumer studies, Thums Up was preferred by far over its main competition (Pepsi), indicating that it had a devoted customer base that would not abandon it.
“One major advantage we had was that a generation of young Indians was drinking Thums Up, which has a very unique taste profile and strong brand personality. With Thums Up in our stable, we could launch a two-pronged strategy against our competitor. We positioned Coke as an aspirational, international brand and continued to market Thums Up as a national revered icon,” Raja added.
According to reports, the initial intention was for Coke to phase out the brands it purchased from Parle, including Thums Up, but the company quickly realised that doing so would jeopardise its market dominance, allowing Pepsi to gain a deeper foothold.
To this day, Thums Up remains the most popular cola brand in the World. It has been advertised under the classic tagline ‘Taste The Thunder’ since the 1980s, and from 2012 and 2016, it was marketed under the tagline ‘Aaj Kuch Toofani Karte Hai.’