How Thums Up Gave Coca-Cola and Indian Politicians A Lesson In Market Economics with R Srinivasan
In this episode, Raghavan Srinivasan, journalist and former editor for The Hindu Business Line, talks about the story of...30 Sept 2024 3:00 PM IST
In this episode, Raghavan Srinivasan, journalist and former editor for The Hindu Business Line, talks about the story of Coca-Cola's entry into the Indian market. He highlights how global brands like Coca-Cola and Pepsi, after initially trying to dominate the Indian market, had to adapt to local preferences, even reintroducing beloved brands like Thums Up and Limca. The conversation underscores how consumer-driven markets often teach lessons that regulations cannot, with companies—both foreign and local—innovating to meet the unique demands of Indian consumers, illustrating the importance of localisation for success in India’s dynamic market.
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INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPT
Puja Mehra: We don't talk enough about it, but the history of Coca-Cola in India demonstrates, doesn't it, how markets can easily do what governments try to do but fail. And in fact, Coca-Cola has probably learned a thing or two about markets from its India experience. But before we tell our listeners this story, let's start from the beginning.
Let's talk about how Coca-Cola entered India in 1956, just about a decade after independence, and how it was a lucrative business for them. Then what happened in the 1970s, the two main characters in this story, and of course, you're a third character as a journalist who wasn't a consumer of fizzy drinks or probably still is. I'd given up fizzy drinks.
But then, you know, you played a role when you broke to the world the news of an important piece in this larger story. So let's start from the beginning when Coca-Cola first enters India.
Raghavan Srinivasan: Yeah, it's interesting, you know, actually, Coca-Cola, some of the brands that Ramesh Chauhan of Parle created very successfully in India, they're all very intricately connected. And the connection just didn't begin in 1993. Coca-Cola is the oldest soft drink brand marketed in India.
I think it came to the country from time in 1956. Around a year later, an orange flavored drink called Gold Spot was launched. Gold Spot was the oldest domestic soft drink brand.
It was a fizzy colored sugary drink, pretty much the formula followed by all the MNCs for all their products. And it was extremely successful for many, many years. Coke had pretty much an undisputed run for some four decades in the country.
They had about 80, 85 percent of the market. The rest were like, you know, nameless, small, local stuff, right? There were a few chota chota brands around, but none of them really had anything other than a very local or a sub-regional presence.
This was the only national brand. And they had a pretty much an unfettered run. But a lot of things happened.
So in 1976, as you know, the emergency was imposed, which led to a sort of major, I think the first major paradigm shift in our politics because India was a sort of uniparty democracy for all intents and purposes for a long time. But emergency summarily changed that. And all these disparate political opposition parties came together in a bid to defeat Indira Gandhi.
And when she called for elections in 1977, the Janata Party was formed and the Janata Party managed to defeat Indira Gandhi. And you had the mother of all, it was not a coalition government in the strict sense of the term, but it was the mother of all coalitions. I mean, you had everybody there from the left parties to the extreme right-wing elements, the predecessor of the BJP, the Jamsangh, the socialists, everybody was in this one large umbrella organization called the Janata Party.
Clearly, there were many, many ideological and policy differences within the rolling administration. But for a while, the more vocal of the minorities prevailed, shall I say. So although Morarji Desai was the head of the government and he was from the Swatantra Party, which was actually in economic policy a little bit more right-wing than the BJP.
But it was George Fernandes, who was the industry's minister, who wanted to sort of go back to the socialist era. And it sort of dovetailed with Morarji and some of the other members of that coalition's Swadeshi ideals. So you had Swadeshi on one side and you had a socialist ideologue on the other side who wanted to sort of have the state control the commanding heights of the economy, in fact, everything in the economy.
So strangely enough, both of these two came together. So the government passed a law saying that all multinational companies should have 60% Indian shareholding, which Koch actually agreed to. They said they will form a joint venture with their bottlers and they would give 60% shareholding for that.
But what George Fernandes further did, because Koch was seen as the sort of symbol of American imperialism, George Fernandes insisted that Koch should also part with this secret Kula formula, right, and that it should be made in India. Koch refused and they walked out. So in 1977, Coca-Cola departed the country and the soft drink cola market, many interesting things happened.
So on the one side, Coca-Cola's principal bottler in the north region was a Sadhaji called Charanjit Singh. And he basically concocted a cola of his own and called it Campo-Cola. In fact, it was pretty good.
You know, I remember, just to digress, if you give me a minute, very interesting anecdote, Luciano Benetton came to India sometime around that time. And he came to Delhi and he took a stroll, he was staying in the imperial or someplace not, and he took a stroll around Janpath and he was quite surprised to see the extent of Benetton's presence on the Janpath footpaths, okay, where you know, there is a very famous export reject clothing, you know, these footpath vendors. So he saw a lot of fake Benetton's there.
So he got so interested, some of them are pretty good. So he got interested and Benetton actually just as a little stunt, they brought out a small book of the world's best and worst fakes, right, in different categories. India managed two entries in that list.
The world's best fake cola was Campo-Cola, according to Luciano Benetton. And he said the world's worst fake pizza was the Nirula's Kheema Pizza. I don't know what it is.
But, you know, so Campo-Cola was a pretty decent substitute and the government came up with its own cola substitute. And it was called double seven, seven seven, the symbol logo was two seven, interlinked sevens, numeral sevens, because it was released in the year 1977. And it was made by then PSU called Modern Food, you know, sort of bread making enterprises the government had taken, because in those days, and if I'm not mistaken, even till now, bread is actually basic bread is subsidized.
It was considered part of the state. So they get government subsidy. And so they use some provision to take over modern at that time.
Anyhow, that's neither here nor there. So Coke exited the country, number of these domestic, you know, Campo-Cola started operating, double seven started operating. And Ramesh Johan decided that here was a big chunk of market available to enter.
And he came up with his own cola called Thumbs Up. So while almost all the colas, Coke, Pepsi, various variants, basically they use the extract of the cola nut as the base. Ramesh Johan basically used tea, black tea extract, and then he put in a lot of, you know, spices which are familiar to Indian, elaichi, cardamom, cinnamon, mace, stuff like that, and came up with something which actually sort of looked like and tasted pretty much like a cola, became very popular.
And then, you know, he was doing very well. He had managed to grab most of Coke's market share. Thumbs Up was the biggest cola brand in the country.
Then the other rival American company, Pepsi, entered India. They accepted the, I mean, by that time, the political scenario had changed. So this whole, this thing of, you know, everything being national owned had gone, but there was still a lot of restrictions on foreign companies.
And Pepsi accepted those restrictions on shareholding, et cetera. And also there was a very peculiar condition put on Pepsi that they cannot sell it as Pepsi. It has to be a sort of Indian brand.
So they came up with this addition called Leher. So it was Leher-Pepsi, Leher-whatever, you know. So that happened, but Pepsi sort of, you know, managed to quickly win away a fair amount of market share also from Thumbs Up.
Puja Mehra: Should we pause here for us, you know, I'll just discuss what it is that makes governments, that was making at that point governments take these decisions like asking Coca-Cola to have an Indian partner, which it accepted, and only when it was asked to share its formula that it decided to leave India. And then later on, Pepsi came to India, I think, after the 1991 reforms, right?
Raghavan Srinivasan: Pepsi, I think, came to India in 1988. So it came to India before Coke returned.
Puja Mehra: But then asking them to have an Indian name, so that makes them change their name to Leher-Pepsi only for Indian market. What were the governments trying to do by doing these things?
Raghavan Srinivasan: So, you know, you must remember that, you know, we were in the last stages of, I would say, the socialist plan development, this thing, where the guiding principle was self-reliance and import substitution. Foreign exchange was scarce, our export earnings are very, very limited. The country was even then paying a heavy price for oil imports after the first oil shock.
The sort of guiding principle for government policy was that, look, I mean, let's try and make everything here if possible. Let's try and sort of substitute as many imported stuff as possible. The second was that, like I said, there was the self-reliance thing also coincided with the Swadeshi sort of push that a certain section of the political class was also gunning for.
But I feel that it is primarily just typical bureaucratic micromanagement. You know, that's something which hasn't changed, that, you know, you may have reforms, you may say we are opening this and that, but the IAS never goes away. They make the minutiae of the rules, they ensure that interpretation is in their hands and it can be liberally interpreted any which way they choose.
And therefore, they have discretionary decision-making power, which means, my bad, that stays forever, no matter what kind of reforms you do. So, this sort of thing, so this was all micromanaging things, you know, insisting that you have an Indian brand. The same thing happened with Maruti Suzuki, right?
It started as Maruti, then Suzuki came in, then they insisted that the Indian brand should be retained. And it became a different matter that even after Suzuki acquired majority control of Maruti Suzuki, by that time, the Maruti brand was so well-known, they said, okay, let's just keep it here for the Indian market. So, the company is still called Maruti Suzuki India.
And they used the brand on the car for a long, long time after they had no legal need to do so. So, those things happen. So, these are lessons which markets teach you.
But by now, these are all government attempts to sort of direct every little way in which capital flows happen, where they went, how they should go, how much should happen. All this was controlled, you know, and still is in some way or the other. So, I think it's a follow-up of that, more than any sort of very strong ideological or economic reasons.
Puja Mehra: Right. So, then Pepsi comes to India in the 1980s.
Raghavan Srinivasan: Yes. So, Pepsi retires, they do well. And then by that time, they sort of, you know, they're working away with the government, they're lobbying, things like that.
Policies change slowly. So, Neher Pepsi is allowed to drop the Neher bit of Pepsi. Then Coke feels that, all right, this is the time to come back to India, because conditions have changed.
We can run our business the way we want to, and not the way the government tells us to. So, they came back, but the market was much tougher than when they left. So, you had Pepsi, which was, you know, an American rival who knew their playbook very well, and which also had deep pockets.
In addition, you had a very well-enclosed domestic player in the form of Ramesh Chauhan and Dalit. So, Coke initially, you know, came in, they started, what they started was, and then they started basically dirty tricks. Okay.
What they did was, they said, we can't take on Ramesh Chauhan, so let's steal his bottlers. And let's steal his bottles. See, in those days, we didn't have plastic packaging for carbonated drinks, it was all in glass bottles, recyclable, very earth-friendly green bottles.
I don't know why that's been dropped. So, what Coke did was that it basically caught hold of Ramesh Chauhan's bottlers and bought the old thumbs-up bottles of Dalit, and would just put them away in a warehouse. So, they didn't come back into circulation.
So, what happened was that Ramesh Chauhan was able to produce his thumbs-up in vast quantity, but he wasn't able to package it and put it into the market because he didn't have enough bottles. And there wasn't enough glass-making capacity to, you know, generate the bottles required for him after Coke kept pitching his bottles, you know. So, I think he decided that, you know, there was no point in continuing this fight.
And at some point, I think he just decided to sell. And as it so happened, I think coincidentally happened to be around when that decision was taken. So…
Puja Mehra: Yeah, tell us that story. So, yeah, that's very interesting.
Raghavan Srinivasan: So, these negotiations with Pali were happening very hush-hush in Delhi. Pali was headquartered in Bombay, and the Bombay journalists were sort of tracking this. But this was happening in Delhi, in the Taj Mansingh hotel.
You know, I had gone to the Taj, which was the, you know, one of the handful of five-star venues available at that time. So, I had gone there for some press conference or something like that. And I had run into the one general, you know, Delhi is full of these liaison agents, power, you know, basically deal brokers, who do everything, you know, who do everything, all kinds of fixing.
They do government tender, arms deals, whatever, you know.
Puja Mehra: And they're all over the place.
Raghavan Srinivasan: Yeah, yeah. One of these guys was having coffee in the lounge, which I… whom I knew.
So, I went to say hello. He said, beto, beto, I have a coffee. We were sitting and chatting.
Then I actually had my back, you know, to the doorway. So, this guy suddenly said, dekho, dekho, Ramesh khukh sara paise leke jaara hai. So, I turn around, I see Ramesh Rohan leaving.
I said, what do you mean, khukh sara paise? Arre, woh, he sold his company to Coke, that's what I hear, or he's going to sell. I'm sure, I think they've finalized the deal because woh khush lagat ke trai, he's looking happy.
And one had heard some rumors about this because, you know, for this age, but it wasn't… nothing was sure. But when this guy said, okay, I said, so I ran after Ramesh Rohan.
Now, Ramesh Rohan got into his car and buzzed off. He had a house in South Delhi. So, I leapt into my laboratory and I chased him behind that.
I went all the way to the house. And those days, you know, you know, one didn't have so many security worries. Even rich people didn't have guards and dogs and all that.
So, I shook off into the house and Ramesh had just sort of plunked himself down in the drawing room and he had these French windows, you know, the garden and the compound there. So, looking out of this thing, I sort of peered through the French window and knocked on it. So, I said, what the hell are you doing here, you know?
So, I said, I'm from Times of India. And I said, you know, I heard that you sort of sold your company to Coke. So, instead of denying it, he said, who told you that?
So, which I knew was a confirmation. Then he tried to deny it. I said, you know, everybody knows this thing.
Just tell me how much. So, I won't tell you this, that, but, you know, eventually admittedly, I didn't need any deal. So, he didn't give me the deal amount, which came out much later, much, much later in disclosures.
But at that time, the rumored enterprise value was about $100 million, which was an enormous sum of money. I think I speculated on that amount. I think the actual deal about what Ramesh Sohan got was $40 million, right?
It was still India's largest M&A deal at that time of any kind. So, that happened, you know, so it was sort of a serendipitous break. And so, I think it's also about just being in the right place at the right time.
Puja Mehra: For us journalists, yeah. So, you know, for people like George Fernandez and several other politicians, bureaucrats, who fear MNCs and fear markets, was Ramesh Sohan selling out to Coca-Cola a confirmation of their fears? How should we see this?
Raghavan Srinivasan: I don't think so. I think, well, in a sense that, you know, it seemed to sort of indicate that over the long term, Indian capital would not be able to fight global or western capital. This was very much the precise…
Mind you, this was, you know, this was around the same time that the Bombay Club was very active, if you remember. That happened post-reforms. There were all the, you know, many of the leading industrial houses of the country got together to lobby the government to disallow overseas investors from taking over Indian companies.
They said this, look, if you allow this, then there will be a flat, there will be no Indian company left, and then all the capital will flow back, because this will get exploited, it's a recolonization. That was the thrust of the Bombay Club argument. So, this was very much in that context.
But I think the government had realized that, you know, and particularly because the reforms process had been initiated. And I think people like Manmohan Singh and the then Prime Minister PV Narasimha Rao, and Chidambaram was the Commerce Minister at that time, they were very pragmatic people. And they realized that, look, I mean, you know, if we do need to achieve a much higher growth trajectory, we cannot do it with following the old policies.
And if it means overseas investors, you know, coming in, whether setting up Greenfield or buying out and Brownfield stuff, it doesn't matter, you know, as long as growth happens, it's good for the country. And we can always put some conditions on ensuring that a lot of the money stays in the country. So, you know, we still don't have, for instance, capital account convertibility even now, all so many decades.
So, they can't just up sticks and leave overnight and create a crisis like it happened in Southeast Asia and elsewhere, where this was allowed very early in the stage of government. And so, I think, you know, there was a realization at the very top that you needed foreign investment and foreign capital and technology to achieve the kind of growth that the country wanted. There was still a very much a socialist overhang in terms of what would be preferred stuff.
So, colas were not certainly preferred investment, junk food and cola, they were not, they wanted high technology manufacturing, know-how, that kind of stuff. But, you know, you can't have two finances in policy. Either you let everything through or you let nothing through.
It's very difficult to sort of do it, because they did earlier also, we had, we always allowed foreign investment on a case-by-case basis since the 50s, but that didn't get the kind of returns that was required. So, that's why they said reform meant opening that up, taking away that case-by-case discretionary decision-making, saying, look, I mean, this is in this sector, you can invest 30%, 25%, 55%, 100%, whatever it is. And that sort of more or less continues even now, where we have a few restricted sectors where government approval is needed for certain levels of investment or above.
Puja Mehra: In fact, I think this also shows that Coca-Cola and Pepsi have had to reinvest their earnings in India to expand. So, you know, they've been investing in India, creating jobs, creating markets. But also, all of the Indian competitors, I mean, Ramesh Chauhan is not making thumbs up anymore.
But Ramesh Chauhan's company has done very well with the money that he got from Coke. Bisleri remains a very important brand. And other than the government's double seven, the other brands are slowly resurfacing because company, even Camper Cooler now is going to resurface probably because, I mean, ultimately, the only failure was when government tried to make a cola.
Raghavan Srinivasan: Sadhguru Yes, I think that's a... that's a sort of a general lesson that government really shouldn't be doing certain kinds of business. Perhaps, I don't know, I'm just speculating here that maybe this was one of the learnings eventually which led to the government saying, okay, we will disinvest.
And divest in certain areas, disinvest in certain others where we will still retain a share, but, you know, we will let the private sell. So, the government only had that finger on everything. They ran hotels, restaurants, they made cola, they made bread, they made everything, they tried everything, you know, it was inefficient.
I mean, you know, telecom, the same story was repeated, the government controlled everything. Eventually, they allowed entry of, you know, private players, mobile telephony happened and, you know, the rest is history. So, I think this was maybe one of the lessons that maybe went home somewhere.
Puja Mehra: Shikriti But did it because, you know, and that's one of the reasons to have this discussion also now. One of the reasons, government has returned to the business of at least selling packaged food when, you know, under its own brands, there is Bharat Kata, there is Bharat Dal. Did the bureaucracy and the politicians learn these lessons?
Raghavan Srinivasan: Sadhguru Well, I don't know because Bharat, of course, you know, the branded rice, atta and dal is an attempt with a different objective, not really to get into that market, but to try and control inflation by having a low-priced alternative available to consumers. And it was a recognition that, you know, the public distribution system alone wasn't enough to combat this inflation, you needed to reach a vast bulk of consumers who were missing and that the market had already got packaged and branded, right, even for staples. So, it's no longer the old-fashioned, you know, even in a kirana store earlier, I remember when I was a kid, it was just deep rows of open sacks with commodities lying in them and you just, you know, weighed out how much you needed and took it home, but now everything is packaged in standardized measure.
There is a brand of some sort, well-known, little-known, unknown, doesn't matter, but it is branded. So, I think the government also realized that, you know, in order to reach the consumer, it needed to package and once you package it, you have some kind of brand on it. So, I don't think it comes under the same category as that, but at all government efforts, it's not working very well, isn't it?
Puja Mehra: Yeah, it's confirmation that the market isn't working for the low-cost segment in the market. The market isn't able to cater to that segment of the market and therefore, there is a need for government to have not only subsidized, in fact, free food through the BDS, but also a subsidized version of packaged food grains. So, if the market was functioning well, there wouldn't be the need, you know, for this.
So, instead of focusing on making the market work well, they feel they can be one of the players in the market and this is how it starts. This is how double selling thinks that they can play the role that the market is not playing.
Raghavan Srinivasan: It's not an invalid argument to make for the government to be a player in certain areas to, if nothing else, act as a price regulator or a price indicator and then people can decide based on that whether they want to pay the price or they prefer to pay a higher price for better quality of service or both. Then it becomes a market choice. So, that argument for government's presence in certain important sectors, food is an important sector, telecom, I feel, is an important sector.
It's now a basic necessity like food, water, electricity, communications is the fourth now. You know, even in housing, there is a case to be made for affordable housing, government-built housing, which acts as a sort of price regulator. Otherwise, rampant private sector, this thing always leads to sort of price inflation and you have this case of huge demand and unsold inventory coexisting together because the price is unaffordable.
So, in certain sectors, that logic of the government being present as a player still works as far as I'm concerned. The problem comes in execution, whether it's able to do it well, whether it is able to match quality of service or quality of product, which is why the Delhi Development Authority, for instance, has an unsold inventory of some two lakh houses because they're shoddy, they cost too much, they're meant for the poor, but the poor don't want them because it's too expensive for them at the quality that they give and the locations that they offer, which are too far away. So, they're not able to sell. So, quality, the SNLM tender is not the first choice telecom provider for anybody.
They're still the only guys available with connectivity in many areas. So, they're still kind of going along there. So, all these issues are there.
Puja Mehra: I would say the reason the market is not able to produce or supply goods and services at affordable costs sometimes or to the affordable segment of the market is again because some of their inputs are determined and the pricing of their inputs, the cost of their inputs is an outcome of government policy, which again, government does not handle well. So, for instance, coming back to Bharat Aata, it is because of the rigidities built into the markets between farmers and companies that package food grains that raises their costs more than what government is because government is able to beat down the MSP by offloading from their stocks. So, their cost turns out to be less sometimes.
In fact, in the last two years, we've seen that government is making rules which forbids private players from even buying in large quantities from farmers. So, the market is actually settling at a higher cost or a higher price because policy is doing that. So, instead of reducing inflation through that route, governments choose to introduce…
Raghavan Srinivasan: Basically, every time the government has tried to intervene in the market process with all noble intentions, what it ended up doing is introduce additional friction. And additional friction means additional cost. Somebody makes money out of it.
There are people who are in the middle of making the money, but the endpoints don't get. So, the producer, in this case, the farmer, his gate prices don't go up. And the consumer, which could be a bulk buyer, corporate buyer or an individual buyer, their prices keep going up.
So, both are losers. In the middle, somebody is making money. And the reason these guys are able to make money is because of friction and restriction introduced by government policy.
So, that's been the problem in our country.
Puja Mehra: Because the market does not allow the fluctuation in the way it would naturally, even in something like food. I mean, because of the large number of buyers, large number of sellers, there is no reason… There are many rigidities.
You can't transport overnight food grains from one part of the country. There are a whole lot of problems, but still markets could function a lot better.
Raghavan Srinivasan: That's true. And where markets function, market preference gets transmitted very, very quickly. And I think this whole collab industry is a very good example of that.
So, if you look at what happened… So, Coke comes back in 1993, whenever they buy out Ramesh Chauhan. Ramesh Chauhan decides there's no point fighting them.
So, he just keeps the water business, sells everything. The first thing Coke did was to kill off the local brands. So, the killed off comes up.
They killed off Limca and they killed off Goldsport, all right? The three brands that… And one very weird one, a drink called Rimsim, which is a GI drink.
So, they killed all of them off. Pepsi did the same thing, by the way, when they bought a much smaller… But, you know, Bombay people would remember a brand called Dukes.
And at Dukes, Cola, Dukes Ice Cream Soda and Dukes Mangola were iconic in Bombay, right? And Pepsi eventually… You know, it was a Parsi company and I think the owner died or something like that.
And so, Pepsi just bought them over and they killed off the brands. And even today, it's lamented. You go to a Parsi wedding and they'll all lament the passing of Dukes.
You know, whatever, that sliced mango which Pepsi offers is not considered a substitute, right? So, you know, in the Cola side, with Coke also, something similar happened. They killed off the brand.
But what happened was, Pepsi kept getting market share, but not Coke. They didn't like it. They'd already…
As I said, you know, foreign peanut or Pepsi, by that time, Pepsi was more familiar. It was there for six or seven years. There was a whole generation of consumers which had come, which had never seen Coke before.
Coke had exited before that. So, then Coke was forced to bring back Thumbs Up and Limca, right? Because the lemon category, lemon flavor was very big in India because it's a hot country and people have traditionally associated, you know, Limbu Pani as the refresher for hot weather.
So, the lemon category was very big. So, they were… And their own lemon was Fanta lemon or whatever.
It wasn't working. You know, their lemon brands were not working. So, there are two lemons, one cloudy lemon drink called Limca and a clear lemon called Citra.
So, they killed all the brands. But eventually, they were forced to bring back Thumbs Up and Limca. And even today, I mean, you know, what, Coke bought Parlin 193.
And so, it's now, what, 30 years plus. Thumbs Up is still their largest seller in the country. Limca is a billion brand for Coke.
WorldSquad, unfortunately, was never revived. I personally liked it. And Fanta is a struggler, right?
You know, then they did the same. So, you know, Fanta never took off. When I was in school, Fanta was, remember, introduced, I remember.
This was in the early 70s. So, if you collected a Coke cap, bottle cap, and gave it to the shop, they gave you a free Fanta. And so, I got hooked on to Fanta.
I still have it. If I go abroad, I ask for a Fanta. That taste was set very early in life.
But, you know, Fanta struggled. But, you know, it's an Indian brand, which eventually, you know, sold. You take something like McDonald's, right?
McDonald's came into India, but they were forced to offer vegetarian options. And eventually, the McAlootiki burger was born. You know, so they had to innovate the local taste.
All these global brands have had to sort of adjust to the demand of the Indian customer. And those who have done so have to reap the benefits also. They're doing well.
So, in that sense, the market sort of ends up teaching lessons which government can't.
Puja Mehra: Yeah, including to MNC. So, pizza, but all of the, I think, the KFC's, which is Pizza Hut, I'm told has a Chole Bhature flavor of the pizza.
Raghavan Srinivasan: So, yeah, they have that. And then they've been forced to do that because Indians are more comfortable with something, you know, wrapped around like a roti. So, you know, what Pizza Hut in Bombay has on wraps.
Puja Mehra: I don't know if it should be called a fake pizza or a fake Chole Bhature. But yeah, the market actually sort of teaches everybody, I suppose.
Raghavan Srinivasan: Yes.
Puja Mehra: Great, great. Thank you. Thank you so much for doing this.
Raghavan Srinivasan: Thank you very much.
