THIRSTING FOR DOMINANCE

BISLERI HAS MAINTAINED ITS LEADERSHIP IN THE BOTTLED WATER BUSINESS. IT'S NOW LOOKING TO CONSOLIDATE AND GET A MEANINGFUL SHARE OF THE CARBONATED SOFT DRINKS MARKETS

- KRISHNA GOPALAN

THERE IS A MOMENT from her teens that is etched in Jayanti Chauhan's memory. Accompanying her father, Ramesh Chauhan, often called the cola king, to the Evian mineral water bottling plant in France she was stunned by the sophistication. There were just three people on the shop floor at Évian-les-Bains (to the locals, it is just Évian) and it sparked a desire to have a plant like that.

"It was quite a revelation to see an automated pallet system. It must be even more sophisticated now," she says, still awestruck two decades later. Walking us through her own plant in Mumbai's suburb of Andheri, Chauhan, now Bisleri International's Vice Chairperson, grins when she points to just a handful of folks on the factory floor. "We have also changed a lot. There are more machines now."

Chauhan grew up to the sound of Thums Up bottles on the assembly line when she visited the factory her family owned. In 1993, her father took the decision to sell the soft drinks business it also had Gold Spot, Limca, Maaza and Citra-to Coca-Cola for a reported $60 million. It was a defining moment in the industry at that time and over the next five years Chauhan senior shifted focus to Bisleri.

Though it was acquired in 1969 from Italian owners, it wasn't until the turn of the century that the Bisleri brand came into its own (see graphic A Brief History). Today, it is a ₹1,645-crore company and the undisputed leader in the highly-fragmented packaged drinking water business, where over 6,000 brands vie against each other. It has 128 plants now, and plans to hit 150 in a couple of years, of which at least 15 will be company-owned. It owns about 13 of the 128 now.