Stats about Western Packaged Food Giants in India

Key stats from a Reuters article about Western packaged food giants which have been in India for a century and the packaged food market:

Some 6 billion meals eaten in India each year are Swiss food giant Nestle's Maggi instant masala noodles. Maggi launched India's first brand of instant noodles in 1983, targeting newly working mothers and children ​as a fast evening snack. All variants of Maggi are made ​with palm oil, whereas many versions sold in Britain use pricier sunflower oil. 

Coca-Cola's Thums Up has grown into a more than $1 billion local brand. Coca-Cola Co bought the brand for about $60 million in 1993 to slowly phase it out and replace it with its own flagship drink. But Indian shoppers were so loyal to the taste ⁠that Coke decided ​to keep it. 

Unilever began selling "Dalda" - a hydrogenated vegetable oil formulation - in India in 1937. Unilever’s Indian subsidiary Hindustan Lever Limited (HLL) sold the Dalda brand to US‑based Bunge in June 2003 for about ₹90 crore. 

India's packaged food market grew to $137.25 billion in 2026, from $129.18 billion in 2025, and is projected to reach $238.83 billion by 2034.

Multinationals maintain lower standards locally compared to versions sold in higher-income countries.

High sugar content is a particular risk in India, which accounts for about ​a quarter of all global cases of diabetes, which health experts have blamed partly on processed food. 

According to Danish drugmaker Novo ​Nordisk, more than 101 million people in India are living with diabetes, while another 136 million have prediabetes.

The All India Food Processors' Association (which includes Nestle, Pepsi, Unilever, Coca Cola) says 80% of packaged food could be flagged in India as having high fat, sugar or salt content under the proposed labelling rule.

Front-of-pack warning labels in India have been pushed back for more than a decade because of resistance from the industry.