Spring water from the Himalayas, home of the world’s highest peak, could soon be a fixture on dining tables from London to Tokyo as India’s biggest bottled water company eyes the $85 billion (£41.6 billion) global market.

Ramesh Chauhan, chairman of Bisleri, will visit Europe this month to talk to international distributors about exporting his premium product, sourced from an underground artesian well in Rudrapur in the northern state of Uttarakhand.

He is confident that Western consumers will lap up “God’s own water” as Indian companies build water brands to compete with established tonics from rival mountain ranges.

“There is a certain curative value that we cannot claim but all the herbs growing there will be found in the water. The Himalayas is, after all, where our gods are supposed to be sitting,” Mr Chauhan says.

Bisleri’s expansion is the latest salvo in the battle of the bottlers, which promises to pull foreign beverage players into the fray as soft drinks continue to be a difficult local sell because of cultural differences.

Indians have always preferred lassi to lemonade, but increasing wealth and health awareness is prompting them to buy water in a way they never bought soft drinks – once considered to be the only “safe” bottled water. Last year, the second-fastest growing economy consumed 3.8 billion litres of water, according to Zenith International, the beverage specialist. “Asia Pacific countries have been instrumental in driving the global market with strong volume gains in China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia and Pakistan,” Gary Roethenbaugh, research director, says.

With the Indian water market growing at 40 per cent a year, Bisleri has attracted takeover interest from Coca-Cola, Nestlé, owner of Perrier, Danone, which owns Evian, the world’s bestselling water, and Fraser and Neave, the Singapore-listed consumer goods group whose brands include Tiger Beer.

Mr Chauhan has already reaped rewards from his previous dealings with Coke. In 1993, he sold the market-leading soft drinks brands Thums Up, Gold Spot and Limca to the US group, reportedly for up to £50 million. At 67, and with no-one to succeed him, Mr Chauhan wants “someone to take the brand forward”, suggesting that he is open to offers for Bisleri, a £37 million turnover business with a 60 per cent market share.

Coke is the least likely bidder, though, having just spent $4.1 billion acquiring Glaceau, the US energy drinks company. The Atlanta-based giant, which has had a chequered past in India as a target of antiWestern sentiment and concerns about pesticide levels in its colas, already owns Kinley, another popular purified water.

Bisleri, which was bought from an Italian company in 1969, claims to be India’s No 1 processed water supplier, selling 100,000 bottles a day, but Himalayan is the first-choice local spring water for the upper classes. Imported Evian is four times the price.

The Tata industrial group owns Himalayan after buying a controlling stake in Mount Everest Mineral Water in June. It also intends to take its product overseas. “A brand that sources from the Himalayas is very evocative,” Abanti Sankaranarayanan, executive director, says.

Water is proving to be big business in India, where the seasonal monsoon sees half the annual rainfall in just 15 days. Storage and distribution is difficult, with even some urban middle-class areas reliant on tanker water of debatable quality. The poor, buckets in hand, have to wait in line for a communal tap.

About 10 per cent of rural India has no access to safe drinking water. The World Bank estimates that 21 per of communicable diseases are related to unsafe water. Diarrhoea alone causes more than 1,600 deaths daily.

“Bottled water used to only be for foreigners and Parsees,” Mr Chauhan, a scion of the Parle Products biscuit family, says. “Right up to 1995, people would laugh if you asked for it. Now, if you drink water out of the jug, they’re thinking you’re going to get sick.”

The local bottled water market is likely to grow strongly for many years. At 12 rupees a litre, or 60 paise a glass from a 20-litre container, it is affordable. But there are big challenges, namely distribution, tampering and the environmental impact caused by more than 3 billion plastic bottles being discarded every year. Even in the cities, where a supply network is easier to establish, distribution is a problem because the retail market is dominated by poky family-run stores.

“Shops do not store even one day’s stock because it is bulky and occupies a lot of space. There are people to whom we deliver twice a day,” Mr Chauhan says. “Distribution is the bottleneck and our highest cost. We are racking our brains how to deal with this.”

Shipping it out of India may prove an easier job.

Message in a bottle

–– 187bn litres of bottled water were sold globally last year
–– The Indian market is worth $804m (£393m), with more than 300 local brands
–– At Independence, only 6% of rural India had access to safe drinking water
–– Each year around the world, 2.1m children under five die through lack of clean water
–– By 2020, India’s demand for water will exceed supply
–– The Yamuna river in Delhi carries 3.5bn litres of sewage a day
–– 80% of India’s domestic water supply comes from groundwater
–– 70m Indians are at risk from excess fluoride in water
–– In 2004, Coca-Cola was ordered to stop drawing water for its bottling plant in Kerala

Source: WHO, World Bank, Zenith International, UN, Indian Government

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