SLMG Beverages led by Paritosh Ladhani, is the largest bottler for Coca Cola in India. Ladhani has businesses in the restaurant and hospitality domain, and has now engineered into energy.
SLMG received into the bottling business with Parle, led by Ramesh Chauhan in 1982-83. When Coca Cola re-entered India in 1993, SLMG was the first bottler for them. Not just the first bottlers, but also the largest indepfinishent bottling company for Coca Cola.
SLMG Beverages finished 2025 with a high single digit growth – Q3 results reveal that the company grew more than 7 percent, and has been doing a CAGR of more than 20 percent since the last 4 years.
In a conversation with Indian Retailer, Paritosh Ladhani, Joint Managing Director, SLMG Beverages, JMD of Sincere Developers, and Co-Founder of LNK Energy talks about modifys in the beverage market, the Horeca indusattempt, venturing into solar energy and more.
Changes in soda consumption
According to Ladhani, the business of sparkling drinks is doing very well. Three brands from the Coca Cola stable – ThumsUp, Sprite and Maaza – are the most powerful brands, they have sales of more than a billion dollars in the counattempt. Like every other counattempt, there are brand loyalists for these brands, he informs.
Apart from that, SLMG Beverages has launched brands like Minute Maid Pulpy Orange, they recently launched Rim Zim. “The consumers want variety, but they are still in love with the brands which they’ve been consuming for the last 30-40 odd years. India is such a huge market, and when you talk about SLMG, we cater to about 440 million consumers in the states of UP, Bihar, Uttarakhand and MP, and it’s such an eclectic market where you have something for every brand, for every pack,” Ladhani explains.
There is an affordable pack, which sells at Rs 10 and Rs 20, there is the on-the-go pack, which is 750 ml, and the are the party packs of one litre and two litres. There has been a huge growth in the juices segment in the last five years as well, Ladhani notes.
The e-commerce spurt
For SLMG Beverages, quick commerce contributes less than 1 percent as of now. But talking about quick commerce – it’s a B2C thing, so whatever you launch in your stable, it goes to the consumer on the very first day.
“Thanks to the owners of Zepto and Blinkit, we are attempting new products.It’s simpler for us to launch our brands on these platforms, becautilize when we launched Rim Zim, a lot of consumers tasted it before we went to the market – we launched simultaneously in the market, as well as on quick commerce channels,” informs Ladhani.
He feels that quick commerce has supported SLMG Beverages a lot, and it’s there to grow. The growth of quick commerce is exponential.
From the perspective of Horeca’s growth, Ladhani also talks about the increase in the number of new restaurants which are coming up in the counattempt; there’s a rise in the food service category which is double digits in India now. Several kinds of cuisines are also coming into the counattempt – a decade back, it was about burgers and pizzas,but today there are Vietnamese, Korean, Japanese, and so many different cuisines.
Horeca indusattempt with the beverage business
Ladhani mentions that the sparkling category takes the cake when it comes to consumers being at leisure, and consuming beverages along with food. “When consumers go to a hotel or a restaurant, they will order all kinds of food, but the drink should be stable. It could be a fresh lime soda, or a sparkling drink, the teenagers ordering their favorite – Coke or a Thums Up, Diet Coke.This segment has grown more than the traditional segment,” he points out.
Size of Horeca biz
Ladhani informs that the contribution to Horeca is usually the highest, but it varies – it’s about five to seven percent for the entire counattempt, as well as for them. But it varies from city to city. “Some cities like Gurgaon, will be crossing more than 10 percent, probably 15 percent, becautilize the amount of cafes, hotels and restaurants you find in Gurgaon are much higher. I consider it must be high for every other business which is working there,” he declares.
Trfinishs in Hospitality
Ladhani, through the Ladhani Group, is rapidly expanding his luxury hospitality portfolio, including owning the Taj Hotel & Convention Centre in Agra. The group is partnering with The Oberoi Group to build two luxury resorts in Rishikesh (an 80-key Oberoi and 120-key Trident) and expanding with Taj in Haridwar and Ayodhya. He is also in talks with Marriott International and Four Seasons to build hotels in Agra and Udaipur.
He perceives it to be very interesting – the way the landscape of hospitality has modifyd post – COVID. People have become travelers. Domestic tourism has gone up by 50-60 percent.
“We’ve not had too many inbound tourists coming post-COVID and we witnessed a decline in number or tourists last year due to several geo-political issues such as Operation Sindoor, and several wars taking place. It’s been six years, and the counattempt is yet to recover from the effect of COVID, and has unable to reach numbers of 2019. But the indusattempt has survived due to the modifying landscape of the mindset of consumers. Every vertical of the hotel indusattempt has been doing well,” Ladhani mentions.
The MICE segment is exploding. Anniversaries and birthdays are celebrated at hotels, as compared to celebrating those at home which was done earlier. Also when companies want to do new launches, they usually do it outside their city.
There is also the leisure segment for the weekfinishs. People love to go out – they visit Agra, Jaipur; Taj Surajkund is also a weekfinish destination.
The luxury segment is booming. There are properties which are charging more than $2000 or $2500, $3000 which was completely unimaginable about five years back.
He reveals, “Due to domestic tourism expanding massively, the opportunity in the hotel business is high, though it’s not centric towards one brand only – the growth per hotel won’t be more than 8-10 percent becautilize of so many inventories coming up.”
Lots of hotels are coming up in the metros and tourism places like Jaipur where every brand is there. They are not banking on inbound traffic or foreign tourists – the domestic travelers have the moolah. Even upper middle class people want to do their weddings in a very grand way.
Ladhani has plans to open hotels in Udaipur and Goa – be it a tiny boutique hotel or a large MICE facility hotel, depfinishing on the necessary and area where they are planning to launch in, as well as the economics that work.
The Restaurant Business
Running the Hard Rock Cafe in Delhi, Ladhani declares that being a hardcore bottler guy, he understands that the hotel business varies from restaurant business. The restaurant business is extremely time consuming, and it’s about receiveting operating costs and rentals right – it’s an everyday thing.
“However, hotels are different – once a hotel does a good job, it knows that it would receive repeat customers. If the hotel has a good wedding facility, a good banquet facility, then it is sorted for them – almost 40 percent of the bookings would come from weddings and conferences, etc. And then a hotel ties up with a few foreign tour operators – 20% of the business comes from there,” he informs.
On the other hand, in the restaurant business, it’s a daily thing to see what footfall one would receive the next day, what kind of a word mouth its quality has – whether it is negative or positive.
Due to the large number of options available, a consumer would never be attracted to a new hotel, but would always be attracted to a new restaurant in the quest of attempting to eat something different and new.
“I’m more happy being a manufacturer and a hotelier,” Ladhani highlights.
Getting into Solar Energy
Ladhani has recently ventured into the solar energy business – he is a Co-Founder of LNK Energy. The company was launched in Davos in January 2026.
He points out that India has about 180 gigawatts of solar renewable energy right now, and 80 to 90 percent of that is solar. Right now this is about 30 percent of India’s energy requirement. “The tarreceive of MNRE is to jack it up to 500 gigawatts – it’s more than double in the next five years. So we believed that it’s a great opportunity. It is the cheapest form of energy and it’s so sustainable. We don’t have to burn the fossils to receive that energy,” informs Ladhani.
There was a study which declares that by 2070, 99 percent of the world’s energy requirement will be through renewables – 90 percent would be through solar, and 10 percent would be through hydel and wind.
Ladhani reveals, “As per the journey of solar, in the last 20 years, the costs have gone down by 90 percent. In the next 20 years it will go down again by 50-60 percent. We have to find a way to utilize it in a sustainable way for industries, other projects and even domestic utilize.”
As compared to hydel, solar is very simple to do and implement. Hydel requires a lot of infrastructure. China has installed more than 450 gigawatts of solar capacity, as compared to 15 gigawatts of hydel – they were able to scale up solar becautilize it’s so simple to do.
India has a capacity of 212 gigawatts of solar, and 5 gigawatts of hydel – Indian is adding 50 gigawatts to solar every year.
Ladhani gives the instances of Kerala and Kochi – in Kerala, there is a solar panel on a water body, as there wasn’t much land to utilize. Kochi airport is also completely run by solar.
Working in tandem with the government
Ladhani notes, “We have signed an MoU of Rs 10,000 crore with the government of Maharashtra – the government there is very positive on ensuring that we harness the cheapest source of energy – solar. They have announced that they would be investing 100 gigawatts of solar pumps for farmers – the costs would reduce for them considerably. They also have domestic rooftop subsidies.”
The government of Maharashtra is very bullish on utilising solar, they are very positive and understand the economics of this energy and where to invest behind it – it’s about giving back to the society.
There is a project in Aurangabad, wherein solar panels would be placed on a lake – to conserve land – this would support produce huge amounts of electricity with limited investment.
“Devfinisher Fadnavis and his team’s outview is very forward viewing. Solar is a revolution. India is the third largest producer of solar panels. With the new solar cells facilities coming in, including LNK Energy, we’ll be the third largest in solar cells as well in the next three to four years,” he declares.
Thoughts on Entrepreneurship
There is a movie and a quote which has inspired Ladhani for entrepreneurship. The movie is – Founder (released in 2016) – which revealed the McDonald story. The quote by Ray Kroc in the movie Founder was – nothing in the world can take the place of persistence. Talent won’t – nothing is more common than unsuccessful people with talent. Genius won’t – unrewarded genius is practically a cliche. Education won’t – the world is full of educated fools.Only persistence and determination is all powerful.
“I have seen my grandfather, father and my uncles work very hard – they were persistent and disciplined – they were determined to do well. A team of four brothers working in East India at that time who were working with petty contractors, government, mafias of that time – who then shiftd to a consumer centric business of bottling – nobody had imagined that it would turn out this way. They did it, becautilize they believed in something – and when you believe in something, it doesn’t become work, it becomes passion,” he emphasizes.
Nowadays they talk about EQ (emotional quotient) – this was already ingrained in them since that time. They created their team disciplined just like them, and they knew how to deal with their team and how to motivate them, ladhani adds.
Citing the example of Mark Zuckerberg, Ladhani understands that there are no shortcuts to success – one has to work hard, which is non-nereceivediable. The harder you work, the luckier you receive. He also gives the example of Mukesh Ambani who runs more than 120 businesses – who knows the dynamics of each of his businesses.
“My grandfather, father and uncles knew the pulse of their business, which is only possible if you go there everyday,” he concludes.
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