India’s beverage market is beginning to see the emergence of a new category layer: functional sodas. These products position themselves between traditional carbonated drinks and wellness-focused beverages, combining familiar soda formats with ingredients associated with gut health, lower sugar consumption, or functional nutrition.
One of the newer entrants in this space is Relow, a Gurugram-based beverage startup founded by Bhavya Vij.
The company was started after Bhavya observed the growing adoption of probiotic and functional beverages during his time in Canada. According to the founder, the Indian market still lacked beverage options that combined soda-like consumption behavior with functional positioning around ingredients and gut health.
Relow operates with a specific market assumption: that a section of urban Indian consumers is beginning to move away from high-sugar beverages but still prefers familiar, ready-to-drink formats over traditional wellness products.
The company’s product positioning reflects this belief.
Relow does not position itself as a conventional health drink. It also avoids positioning itself directly against mainstream sodas through “diet” branding. Instead, the company describes its offering as a functional soda built around probiotic ingredients and lower sugar content, intended for everyday consumption occasions.
The broader category context supports why brands like Relow are beginning to emerge.
Across urban consumer markets, conversations around gut health, ingredient transparency, and sugar intake have become more visible over the last few years. This has influenced growth across adjacent categories including protein snacks, clean-label foods, kombucha, electrolyte beverages, and functional nutrition products.
According to Hypetrics Intelligence observations, three consumption shifts are contributing to the development of the category in India:
- Increased attention toward sugar consumption and label reading
- Rising consumer familiarity with gut-health-related products
- Influence of global food and beverage consumption trends through digital exposure
At the same time, the category remains at an early stage in India.
Functional soda is still not a widely understood product segment among mass consumers. This creates a market education challenge for newer brands operating in the space. Unlike traditional beverages where the use case is immediately understood, functional beverages often require explanation around ingredients, benefits, and positioning.
For Relow, this has shaped both brand communication and distribution priorities.
The company is currently focused on digital-first and discovery-led channels, including its own website and Amazon India. Future expansion plans include quick-commerce platforms, fitness studios, cafes, and wellness-oriented retail spaces where the target consumer is already active.
Operationally, the company remains bootstrapped and lean. According to the founder, product development, operations, marketing, and distribution are currently managed internally without a large team structure.
This reflects a broader pattern visible across many early-stage consumer brands in India, particularly in emerging categories where awareness-building and controlled spending become equally important during the initial growth phase.
The company’s longer-term objective is to build distribution across both online and offline channels as the functional beverage category matures in India.
From a market perspective, brands like Relow are less about replacing traditional soda consumption immediately and more about testing whether Indian consumers are ready for alternative beverage formats that combine familiarity with functional positioning.
The category itself is still developing. Consumer behavior, repeat purchase patterns, pricing acceptance, and offline scalability remain open questions across the segment.
What is becoming clearer, however, is that the beverage conversation in India is gradually expanding beyond flavour and convenience alone. Ingredient composition, sugar levels, and functional positioning are increasingly becoming part of how younger urban consumers evaluate packaged drinks.