Kurkure’s Insight into Regional Flavor Preferences

Industry and Competitive Context

India's branded savoury snacks market is one of the most structurally complex consumer goods arenas in the world. As reported in credible trade and business media, the market reached Rs 335.6 billion in size, with traditional namkeen holding the largest share by volume at 37 percent, followed closely by extruded snacks at 36 percent and potato chips at 23 percent. More than 3,000 brands compete in this space, a number that alone signals the degree of fragmentation and the intensity of local competition.

What makes this market strategically distinctive is not its size but its diversity. India's culinary identity is regional at its core. Taste preferences in Rajasthan diverge sharply from those in Andhra Pradesh or West Bengal, and this heterogeneity makes a standardised, pan-India product strategy inherently limited in its ceiling. The brands that have dominated the category, Haldiram Foods, Balaji Wafers, Bikaji, and Pratap Snacks, have all built their positions on deep alignment with regional taste architectures rather than against them.

PepsiCo India entered this market as a pioneer, introducing Lays-branded potato chips and the Kurkure extruded snack platform in 1999. However, being early did not guarantee enduring leadership. By 2018, PepsiCo had fallen to third position in the broader savoury snacks market, trailing Haldiram Foods and Balaji Wafers. ITC, which had entered with its Tedhe Medhe brand, was rapidly closing the gap from fourth position. Parle Products occupied fifth. Notably, as recently as 2016, PepsiCo had outranked both ITC and Balaji. The competitive reversal over that two-year window was a direct signal that the market rewarded regional rootedness over global brand equity.

Brand Situation Prior to the Regional Strategy

Kurkure was launched in 1999 as PepsiCo India's first product designed and developed entirely within the country rather than adapted from a global PepsiCo format. Its founding team recognised that the existing market had a price gap: potato chips retailed at approximately Rs 300 per kilogram while traditional namkeen sat at roughly Rs 100 per kilogram. Kurkure was positioned to occupy a conceptually and commercially new space, what PepsiCo internally termed a "bridge category" between traditional namkeen and Western-style chips. The inaugural product, Masala Munch, was made from a combination of rice, lentils, and corn, and its very name, derived from the Hindi word for crunchy, was the organic output of consumer research in which trial participants kept using the word to describe their experience.

The initial go-to-market approach was distribution-intensive and regionally concentrated, beginning in Chandigarh and expanding aggressively through general trade. By 2005, the brand had achieved distribution across more than 100,000 retail outlets nationally. For much of the 2000s, Kurkure held a commanding position in the extruded snacks segment. But as the category grew and attracted more competitors, including an estimated 3,000 new brands between 2009 and 2012, the brand's original formulation without meaningful regional diversification was insufficient to maintain leadership.

The strategic challenge Kurkure faced entering the mid-2010s was both competitive and structural. The brands gaining ground were those with portfolios that felt genuinely local to their consumers. Kurkure's heritage as a pan-India bridge product was a strong identity but a potentially limited one in a market where regional authenticity had become a source of durable competitive advantage.

Strategic Objective

PepsiCo India's response to this repositioning challenge was publicly articulated through multiple executive communications. The company declared a goal of doubling its salty snacks business in India over five years, with Kurkure as the primary vehicle for that growth. Within that broader growth ambition, the specific strategic lever was regionalisation. As stated by Partho Chakrabarti, Vice-President, Snacks, PepsiCo India: "Consumer preference for snacks is different in different regions of the country. We are focusing on bringing in new regional Kurkure variants to cater to different sets of consumers." The company committed to introducing at least 20 new regional flavours of Kurkure as part of this initiative, with the traditional Indian snacks segment, valued at Rs 7,000 crore and dominated by PepsiCo and ITC as the two major organised players, as the core battleground.

What is strategically significant here is that the objective was not simply to expand the product portfolio but to reposition Kurkure's value proposition from a pan-India crunchy bridge snack to a brand capable of celebrating and reflecting India's culinary plurality. The intent was to compete against deeply entrenched local players on their own terms, using regional taste authenticity as a point of parity rather than ceding that ground by default.

Campaign Architecture and Execution

The regionalisation strategy unfolded across multiple phases and product innovations, each publicly documented through official press releases, executive statements, and credible trade media coverage.

The earliest documented instance of formalised regional flavour innovation under the Kurkure umbrella was the Ingredients of India range, which introduced variants including Mumbai Chatpata Usal, Bengali Jhaal, and South Spice Mix. These were designed around region-specific use of dals, reflecting an effort to root the product in locally recognised ingredients rather than abstract masala profiles. The initiative demonstrated that the strategy operated not merely at the flavour level but at the ingredient level, using culinary signals that consumers in each region would find familiar and credible.

The most significant executed phase of the regionalisation strategy came in September 2018 with the launch of Kurkure Twistkeen. This was a structurally new product format, a baked finger snack designed to reimagine traditional namkeens in a modern, convenient format with reduced salt content. Kurkure Twistkeen was offered in three variants: Bikaneri Bhujia, Andhra Murukku, and Shahi Namkeen. Each variant drew directly from a well-recognised regional snack tradition. Bikaneri bhujia, originating from Bikaner in Rajasthan, is a category of namkeen so geographically distinctive that it holds a Geographical Indication registration from the Indian Patent Office. Andhra murukku is a staple of South Indian snacking culture. Shahi namkeen referenced the premium namkeen tradition of North Indian festive occasions. The product was the direct output of research conducted across more than 20 cities with over 5,000 consumers, according to PepsiCo India's official statements, which indicated that consumers sought a modern and convenient interpretation of their traditional namkeens rather than a wholesale replacement.

Jagrut Kotecha, Vice-President for PepsiCo India's snacking category, stated publicly: "We are looking to create a new category in the salty snacks segment through Kurkure Twistkeen by following a strategy of re-imagining traditional snacks and offering them in a modern and convenient format with low salt content." The product was initially available at Rs 15 and Rs 55 price points and distributed across 18 states. Manufacturing was located at PepsiCo's Pune facility.

Beyond Twistkeen, the broader 2018 regionalisation wave involved close to a dozen new local flavours across the Kurkure portfolio, revised packaging that foregrounded regional ingredients and spice imagery, and a series of revamped pack designs aimed at signalling the transformation to trade and consumers alike.

The regional marketing strategy was also executed at the state level. The "UP ka No. 1 Taste" campaign, documented in trade media, targeted Uttar Pradesh specifically using collaborations with regional influencers and digital content designed to position Kurkure as the definitive snack of the state. Aastha Bhasin, Category Lead, Kurkure, PepsiCo India, stated in connection with this campaign: "India is a country that's teeming with a multitude of cultures and distinct taste preferences. Being one of the disrupters in the Indian salty snacks category, we at Kurkure, recognise and celebrate this diversity by tailoring our product portfolio to suit the distinct palates of our consumers."

The strategy also extended into fusion innovation. In January 2025, PepsiCo India and Tata Consumer Products announced a collaboration to launch Kurkure Schezwan Chutney in partnership with Ching's Secret, Tata's desi Chinese brand. Aastha Bhasin described this as part of Kurkure's hyperlocal strategy: "fusion flavours becoming increasingly popular" and the collaboration as an effort to blend "the fiery and tangy kick of Ching's schezwan chutney" with Kurkure's existing flavour identity for a genuinely Indian-Chinese snacking experience. The Kurkure Jowar Puffs extension, announced separately, represented a further dimension of the strategy, entering the millet-based snacking segment and leveraging India's growing policy and consumer focus on millets as a heritage grain category.

Positioning and Consumer Insight

The foundational consumer insight driving the entire regional strategy is both simple and competitively underappreciated by most multinational food brands operating in India: regional taste is not a niche preference but the mainstream condition of the Indian snacking consumer. As Business Standard reporting directly noted, "what has remained constant is the underlying theme of the market, where regional flavour is the consumer's preference." The four companies outranking or challenging PepsiCo by 2018 were all home-grown entities with portfolios oriented entirely around traditional Indian tastes.

The insight Kurkure operationalised was that regional preference is not a barrier to scale but a pathway to it, provided the brand can deliver credible authenticity at sufficient speed and geographic breadth. The difficulty for a multinational is that regional authenticity cannot be engineered from a centralised innovation process; it requires embedded consumer research, local ingredient sourcing signals, and a willingness to accept portfolio complexity at the SKU level as a trade-off for consumer relevance.

Kurkure's positioning evolved from "the crunchy bridge snack for every Indian" toward something more granular: a brand that actively reflects and celebrates India's specific, named regional food identities. The Twistkeen range did not merely reference regional flavours abstractly; it named Bikaner, Andhra, and the Shahi tradition explicitly. This degree of geographic specificity in naming and flavour design is a deliberate positioning choice, signalling to consumers in each region that the brand sees them rather than a homogenised Indian palate.

The flavour geography that PepsiCo publicly acknowledged was itself instructive as a record of which regional taste profiles had demonstrably gained traction. North India, particularly the Hindi belt, gravitated toward Masala Munch, Chilli Chatka, and Green Chutney Style variants. South India showed stronger uptake for Naughty Tomato and Hyderabadi Hungama. These documented preferences informed subsequent investment in region-specific product development and distribution intensity.

Media and Channel Strategy

The channel strategy for the Twistkeen launch combined digital-first awareness with direct trial mechanics at point of sale. The marketing campaign was officially described as a 360-degree initiative led by digital, supplemented by in-shop activations and consumer trials. PepsiCo India employed a documented geo-targeting tactic: digital viewers within one kilometre of a modern trade outlet were served trial coupons for Kurkure Twistkeen, creating a direct link between media exposure and physical retail trial. The company acknowledged this as a novel media-to-trial approach at the time of launch. At the retail level, Kurkure Twistkeen was supported through island display units, floor standing units, category arch gates, and category-level branding to build visibility within the traditional snacking aisle.

The UP ka No. 1 Taste campaign deployed regional influencer partnerships and digital content as primary channels, reflecting Kurkure's recognition that sub-national audiences are better reached through regionally resonant voices rather than national celebrity campaigns alone. This marks a meaningful strategic shift in media logic, from a centralised, high-reach broadcast model toward a more granular, geographically segmented digital activation model.

For the Schezwan Chutney collaboration with Ching's Secret in 2025, PepsiCo issued a formal press release through its India corporate website, indicating that brand partnership communications were treated as official corporate announcements rather than merely trade initiatives.

Business and Brand Outcomes

No verified public information is available on specific market share changes attributable exclusively to the regional flavour strategy within a defined period. PepsiCo India does not separately disclose Kurkure's revenue figures in publicly available reports.

What is publicly documented is that by 2023, PepsiCo India's total revenues were reported at Rs 8,130 crore, with the food business accounting for approximately half of that figure. The snacks division had earlier been reported as representing close to 45 percent of PepsiCo India's Rs 65.4 billion in annual sales, a proportion that reflects the strategic weight the company placed on the category. Senior executives including Aastha Bhasin, Category Lead for Kurkure, stated in Business Standard in September 2023 that Kurkure was "on a good momentum" and that the plan was to "sustain that growth and build on it in the coming months," with new product launches accelerating, including three Kurkure launches within a two-month window at that time.

The pace of product launches itself serves as a documented indicator of strategic commitment. The trajectory from the Ingredients of India range in the early 2010s through the Twistkeen launch in 2018 through the Jowar Puffs millet extension and the Schezwan Chutney collaboration in 2025 demonstrates a sustained, multi-year investment in regional and culturally relevant innovation that has not been reversed or consolidated. The expansion of Kurkure's manufacturing footprint to seven locations across India, including Sangrur, Pune, Howrah, Sonipat, Ranga Reddy, Vaishali, and Kamrup, as documented on PepsiCo India's corporate records, also reflects the operational scale required to support regionally distributed demand rather than centralised production.

Strategic Implications

Kurkure's regional flavour strategy offers several analytically significant lessons for brand managers navigating heterogeneous, culturally fragmented consumer markets.

The most fundamental implication is that in markets where regional identity is a primary organising principle of consumer preference, portfolio homogeneity is a structural disadvantage. PepsiCo's experience of losing ground between 2016 and 2018 to organisations like Haldiram, Balaji, and ITC, each of which competed on regional taste authenticity, demonstrates that a single brand identity built on a pan-national positioning will face ceiling effects regardless of distribution strength. The regional strategy did not require abandoning Kurkure's core identity; it required extending that identity to encompass specific culinary geographies.

The second implication concerns the relationship between consumer research depth and product credibility. The documented research base for Kurkure Twistkeen, more than 20 cities and 5,000 consumers, suggests that PepsiCo treated regional insight as a rigorous R&D input rather than a marketing overlay applied to an otherwise standardised product. The naming of specific regional traditions, Bikaneri, Andhra, Shahi, rather than generic Indian flavour descriptors, reflects the consumer research finding that specificity, not approximation, is what makes regional positioning credible.

A third implication involves the role of collaboration as a regional credibility accelerator. The 2025 Ching's Secret partnership was explicitly described by PepsiCo India as consistent with its hyperlocal strategy. By partnering with Tata's Ching's Secret brand, which had built its own deep consumer credibility in the Indian-Chinese fusion food space, Kurkure accessed a form of regional taste authority it could not have manufactured internally. Strategic collaboration with culturally embedded local brands can therefore serve as an efficient mechanism for regional market entry or flavour category expansion.

Finally, the Kurkure case illustrates the complexity of managing portfolio breadth as a response to market heterogeneity. A strategy of at least 20 regional variants necessarily creates challenges in production complexity, supply chain management, and distributor attention. PepsiCo's response, building out a multi-location manufacturing network and using co-packing arrangements such as the agreement with Varun Beverages for Kurkure Puffcorn production, suggests that operational flexibility must be designed in parallel with portfolio ambition rather than treated as a subsequent operational concern.

Discussion Questions

1. PepsiCo India's publicly stated goal of doubling its salty snacks business in five years was anchored in a regional flavour strategy for Kurkure. What are the organisational and operational trade-offs of pursuing portfolio breadth through regional SKU proliferation versus pursuing depth through fewer, more heavily invested regional variants? How should a brand manager decide where on that spectrum to position?

2. The Indian savoury snacks market is structurally dominated by home-grown brands with regional taste portfolios. To what extent does the Kurkure case challenge or validate the conventional multinational advantage of global scale, R&D capability, and distribution muscle? Under what market conditions does local authenticity override multinational capability?

3. Kurkure's 2025 collaboration with Ching's Secret to launch a Schezwan Chutney variant was described as part of the brand's hyperlocal strategy. Evaluate the strategic logic of using a third-party brand partnership to build regional flavour credibility. What are the brand equity risks and benefits of this approach compared with internal innovation?

4. PepsiCo India publicly disclosed that the Kurkure Twistkeen launch was informed by research across 20 cities and 5,000 consumers. What does the scale and specificity of this consumer research suggest about the role of ethnographic and geographic insight in product development for culturally heterogeneous markets? How does this compare to research approaches used in more culturally homogeneous markets?

5. Kurkure was originally conceived as a "bridge category" product sitting between traditional namkeen and Western-style chips. As the brand has moved to incorporate explicitly regional namkeen references through Twistkeen and similar innovations, does it risk eroding its original bridge positioning? How should brand managers navigate the tension between expanding a brand's meaning and diluting its founding identity?