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Understanding India's shift towards health-conscious beverage choices
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Tuesday, 13 October, 2026, 16 : 00 PM [IST]
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Prakash Ladhani
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Sugar-free colas ran out of stock this summer, in some cases for weeks at a stretch. Indian bottlers are still catching up to a shift in taste that arrived faster than most of them had planned for. What was, until recently, a niche corner of the beverage aisle now accounts for a meaningful and rapidly expanding share of total volumes across the country's largest bottling operations, growth that has outrun internal projections and forced a rethink of supply chains built for a slower, steadier era of consumption.
Three things explain the pace. Wellness has become a bigger part of everyday life for a large section of urban India, visible in the rise of fitness tracking, gym memberships, and a general habit of reading nutrition labels before buying anything. This broader cultural shift toward mindful living naturally extends to what people drink, alongside what they eat and how they exercise. Younger consumers bring a different relationship with choice itself, quicker to try new formats and more comfortable exploring options than earlier generations. Access has widened considerably too. Quick commerce has put entire categories, from flavoured water to functional drinks, minutes away from any consumer, turning beverage selection into something closer to a daily decision than a fixed household habit.
What this changes operationally
Reformulation touches sourcing, since sweetener supply chains run differently from sugar supply chains at scale. Packaging teams are testing smaller formats built for trial purchases. Demand forecasting, long calibrated on stable seasonal rhythms, now has to plan for segments growing at a very different speed. Cold-chain and inventory planning carry much of that adjustment directly. Keeping a fast-growing product reliably on shelf matters to a company's credibility just as much as taste does, as this summer's shortages made clear.
Policy has largely moved in step with this shift, which makes planning easier. The GST restructuring from September 2025 set clearer rate distinctions across beverage categories, giving companies a defined framework to plan reformulation and portfolio investment around. Separately, a parliamentary standing committee has pushed food regulators to notify front-of-pack labelling rules that have sat in draft form for close to four years. Once these are in place, nutritional information becomes legible at a glance, which works in favour of companies already investing seriously in transparent communication with consumers.
Building a wider shelf
The real story here is portfolio diversification. Companies are reformulating selectively, where the science and the taste profile genuinely support it, while continuing to invest in the categories that have built their businesses over decades. Functional and low-calorie beverages are being added as new occasions for consumption. The same consumer reaching for a classic cola at a family gathering might just as easily pick up a zero-sugar variant on a routine weekday, and meeting both moments well is the actual task in front of manufacturers today.
The companies that come out ahead won't be the ones that reformulate the fastest or announce the newest launches. They will be the ones that read what a consumer wants at nine in the morning versus what the same consumer wants at a wedding that evening, and stock their shelves accordingly. India's beverage market has room for both instincts, the familiar cola and the newer, lighter choice, and the businesses that respect that range, rather than betting everything on one direction, are the ones writing the next chapter of this industry.
(The author is Director, SLMG Beverages)
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