Ramesh Chauhan on M&A / Acquisitions

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.