No sugar please: Cities drive spike in diet soft drinks

Coca-Cola Co. last week provided some evidence of the urban Indian's growing propensity to swap sugary drinks for sugar-free variants—"a record-breaking 2.5 million-unit cases" of its "no-sugar" Thums Up XForce sold in just three months.

- Suneera Tandon & Sowmya Ramasubramanian

Coca-Cola, which is the world's largest beverage company, its closest rival PepsiCo Inc., and Reliance Consumer Products, which revived the iconic Campa Cola two years ago as Campa, all have zero-sugar variants catering to India's growing obsession with counting calories.

With consumers lapping up these "healthier" fizzy drinks, beverage makers have been able to expand their product lines with zero-sugar or low-sugar variants at different prices without needing separate bottling investments.

According to researcher Mintel Group's Global New Products Database, Indian non-alcoholic beverage brands introduced more products with "minus" claims—such as low-sugar or no-sugar—than "plus" claims between July 2019 and June 2024.

In the five years to May this year, the number of products in India with 'low sugar' and 'reduced sugar' claims surged 483%, and products with 'sugar-free' claims increased 142%, according to Mintel. Urban consumers, especially those in metropolitan cities, are leading this shift, it added.