Fruit-based drinks displace Fizzy drinks from top 5 beverage brands in India

For the first time ever, juices and juice drinks from brands like Real, Slice and Tropicana have displaced fizzy drinks, like Coke and Pepsi, from the list of top five highest sold beverages across modern retail chains in India. The Nielsen data was collected for the first half of 2016.

This echoes the global trend of consumers switching to healthier and functional beverages over aerated ones, which are for long considered to be hazardous for health in the long run.

However, the data is only for modern trade, and general trade could still be selling more aerated drinks could as compared to juices and juice drinks, given that it has more a significantly bigger base from modern trade.

Future Group’s president for food and FMCG Devendra Chawla, and Bigbasket.com co-founder Vipul Parekh, confirmed this trend.

"Traditional drinks and tastes have come out of the shadows," Chawla told ET. "The past few decades saw high-decibel marketing and commitment of resources from global brands, but consumers are going back to favouring what they perceive are healthier and traditional flavours," he added.

Parekh too confirmed the trend, saying, "Juices and juice-based drinks are growing about 2.5 times faster than aerated drinks - we are observing this trend over the past six months."

Talking of specific brands, it was Dabur's Real, Mondelez' Tang, PepsiCo's Slice and Tropicana, and Hamdard's rose drink Rooh Afza that grabbed places in the list of five top-selling beverages across modern trade in the first half of 2016.

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Comparing the data to last four years – starting from January to June 2013 to January to June 2016, one can see that while in 2013 and 2014, Pepsi was the highest selling brand in modern trade, it was Coke that grabbed the spot last year.

However, this time around, none of the two made it to the top five. However, a Coca-Cola spokesperson said that their internal numbers show a different result.

"As per data available with us, which we procure from third parties, Thums Up and Maaza continue to be amongst the top 5 non-alcoholic ready-to-drink brands in modern trade," the person told ET.

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