Ramesh Chauhan

Wikipedia records that Bisleri International, formerly Parle Exports and Parle Bisleri, is an Indian multinational best known for its eponymous bottled water brand. Ramesh Chauhan started the company in 1969.

The brand itself predates Chauhan's ownership. In 1966, Italian doctor Cesari Rossi and Indian businessman Khushroo Suntook introduced Bisleri bottled water in India by setting up a Thane factory, naming it after a 19th-century Italian alcohol remedy drink created by inventor Felice Bisleri.

In 1969 the Jayantilal Chauhan family of Parle Group acquired the struggling Bisleri brand for Rs 4 lakh (then about US$50,000), as the Italian founders looked to exit the Indian market. The acquisition was a strategic rescue of a brand whose Italian name, in Ramesh Chauhan's later telling, 'added a dash of class to it' — a soft intangible-asset purchase that decades later would become the umbrella brand for an entire category in India.

In the 1970s, Jayantilal Chauhan split his soft drinks business between sons: Prakash Chauhan obtained control of Parle Agro, while Ramesh Chauhan received Parle Exports (now Bisleri International). In 1976, Parle Exports launched Maaza, a mango-pulp fruit drink — building a portfolio of beverages alongside the still-nascent mineral water business.

After The Coca-Cola Company exited India in 1977, Parle Exports entered the carbonated drinks segment with Thums Up (cola), Limca (lemon-flavoured) and Gold Spot (orange-flavoured). To complement its soft drinks portfolio, Parle launched mineral and carbonated water under the Bisleri brand name — the first time the water business was commercially pursued, in PVC bottles initially, switching to PET in the mid-1980s.

Wikipedia records that India's 1991 liberalization saw Coca-Cola return to the country, and in 1993 Parle Exports sold its carbonated drinks brands Thums Up, Limca, Gold Spot, Citra and RimZim to The Coca-Cola Company for between Rs 125 crore (about US$40 million) and Rs 200 crore (about US$60 million).

In 1998 Ramesh Chauhan sold Delhi Bottling Company and Coolaid — the bottling companies for the five carbonated drink brands — to Coca-Cola, completing a multi-stage exit from the soft drinks business he had built in the 1970s.

Bisleri re-entered carbonated drinks in 2016 with Bisleri Pop — four soft-drink variants including Limonata, Fonzo, Spyci and Pina Colada — exploiting the expiry of the 2008 non-compete clause that had kept Parle out of carbonates since the Coca-Cola sale. The re-entry illustrates how a non-compete's expiry can reopen a category for an incumbent brand, and how Chauhan used Bisleri's water-distribution moat as a launchpad for adjacent beverages.

Wikipedia notes Bisleri holds about a 32% market share in the organized bottled water segment, competing with PepsiCo's Aquafina, The Coca-Cola Company's Kinley, Parle Agro's Bailley and IRCTC's Rail Neer. Bisleri is often used as a generic term for bottled water in India, and knockoff brands with similar spelling and branding (Belsri, Bislleri, Bilseri) have emerged —.

Firstpost reports that the 82-year-old Ramesh Chauhan was in 2022 in the process of divesting Bisleri International to Tata Consumer Products Ltd (TCPL) for an estimated Rs 6,000-7,000 crore. After owning the brand for more than 50 years — having bought it back in 1969 for Rs 4 lakh — the deal represented a near-complete exit from the category Chauhan had built.

Chauhan told the Economic Times his reasons for the sale were poor health and the lack of a successor. His daughter Jayanti, although active at Bisleri for years and credited with restructuring HR, sales and marketing at the Delhi and Mumbai offices and modernizing factory automation, had decided not to take over the business. Her refusal sent shock waves through corporate India and left Chauhan with no family successor —.

Chauhan is quoted saying the sale decision was 'painful' but he chose Tata Consumer because they would 'nurture and take care of it even better'. He added that since he had no intention of running the company he would not keep a minority stake, choosing instead to invest the proceeds in environmental and charitable causes.

Firstpost traces Bisleri's Italian roots — entrepreneur Felice Bisleri's alcohol remedy drink made of cinchona, herbs and iron salts, sourced from a spring called Angelica in the Italian town of Nocera Umbra. After Felice's death in 1921, family doctor Dr Rossi took over, and in 1965 Rossi and Khushroo Suntook set up the first Bisleri water plant in Thane.

In 1969 the Chauhan brothers Ramesh and Prakash acquired the brand for Rs 4 lakh and launched it in India in glass bottles in Bubbly and Still variants. Chauhan later told Business Today that selling packaged drinking water was never in his business plans — Bisleri Soda had demand from five-star hotels, which is why he bought out the company.

In 1995 Chauhan introduced a small 500 ml Bisleri bottle priced at just Rs 5 — the move that took the brand to the masses. The small format reduced price and solved portability, achieving 400% growth and capturing 40% of the packaged water bottle market. The pricing-and-pack-size decision is the textbook case of an Indian consumer brand unlocking category demand by trading down from premium hotel formats to mass affordability.

Eleven years after the Rs 5 bottle, Firstpost notes Bisleri's rebranding exercise: switching the bottle colour from blue to green and changing the conical bottle shape to a rounder one, paired with the 'Har Paani Ki Bottle Bisleri Nahin' campaign to combat counterfeits. The packaging and marketing shift delivered strong results —.

In this BusinessLine conversation, Chauhan frames the cola business as structurally different from bottled water. Coca-Cola and Pepsi, he says, treat carbonated drinks as a 'bread and butter business' that requires constant attention to carton suppliers and cap suppliers, whereas Bisleri's water business is 'a cash business' that buys on credit and always carries sufficient stock.

Chauhan expresses pride that Thums Up remains India's number one cola despite years of multinational competition. He frames it as 'a great feeling that Thums Up is still number one' and notes that the multinationals' own brands have not been able to overshadow Thums Up — vindication that the Indian-built brand had stronger consumer pull than the global parents who bought it.

BusinessLine records that in 1977, Ramesh Chauhan with brother Prakash and then-Parle CEO Bhanu Vakil launched Thums Up as the flagship cola. When Coca-Cola re-entered India in 1993, Parle sold Thums Up, Limca and Gold Spot to Coca-Cola for around $60 million — at a time when Thums Up held 85% market share in the Indian cola category.

Chauhan tells BusinessLine there are 'no regrets and no hard feelings' about the sale — calling it a 'simple business strategy' despite many critics at the time. He explains he did not have much choice because Parle was operating through a franchise system in which each franchise owned its own plant, and most franchises had already declared their intention to team up with Coca-Cola.

After selling the cola portfolio, Chauhan concentrated on bottled water — in which he tells BusinessLine he maintains a leadership position despite all competition. He frames the choice as a deliberate strategic refocus on a category whose cash economics suited his operating style, rather than as a retreat from carbonates. The water business had lower volatility, less supplier complexity and no franchise-related governance strain.

Chauhan positions himself as a 'savvy businessman sitting on cash reserves'. He discloses that proceeds were invested with Merrill Lynch — 'we can draw on the money any time we want' — and that Bisleri follows a policy of not borrowing. The 'we don't borrow' rule is presented as a strategic commitment to fund growth from internal accruals and invested cash, a notably conservative posture for an Indian consumer goods company of that scale.

Chauhan emphasizes the structural simplicity of running a water business compared to a carbonated-drinks business: he no longer has to worry about glass bottles, sugar, citric acid, food colour or carbon dioxide gas. He is glad 'the headache has moved on to someone else', referring to Coca-Cola.