Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is taking on India's ice cream giants at 11 cents a cup

Billionaire Mukesh Ambani is taking his disruption strategy into India’s ice cream market, launching a new brand with products starting at just ₹10 as his Reliance empire pushes deeper into the country’s everyday consumer spending.

Reliance Consumer Products, the consumer goods arm of Ambani’s Reliance Industries, has launched Bombay Creamery as it moves into a crowded market dominated by established names including Amul, Vadilal, Mother Dairy, Kwality Wall’s and Arun, alongside global brands such as Magnum and Baskin-Robbins. The new brand will offer cones, cups, tubs, bars and sticks, with products initially available across western India before a planned nationwide rollout.

The ₹10 starting price is the biggest talking point around the launch. A Reuters check of a grocery delivery platform found that Amul’s mango-flavoured ice cream stick was priced at ₹20, meaning Bombay Creamery is entering the market with a starting price that is half that of at least one competing product. The move reflects the aggressive pricing strategy that has become closely associated with Reliance’s expansion into highly competitive consumer markets.

Ambani has already used low prices to reshape major Indian industries. A decade ago, Reliance’s Jio disrupted the country’s telecom sector with aggressive pricing, helping it become one of India’s dominant telecom operators. Reliance later revived Campa, its soft-drink brand, and used competitive pricing to challenge established players in India’s cola market. Bombay Creamery now gives the billionaire another opportunity to test whether the same formula can work in a completely different consumer category.

The challenge, however, will not simply be about selling cheaper ice cream. India already has a deep network of local, national and international brands competing for consumers, making distribution and visibility just as important as price. Reliance believes its extensive retail and distribution network can give Bombay Creamery an advantage, allowing the company to place its products in more stores and reach consumers across different parts of the country as the rollout expands.

Industry experts believe Reliance’s combination of pricing, retail reach, distribution capabilities and consumer data could help the new brand gain attention quickly. A low entry price could also encourage consumers who have never tried the product to make their first purchase, potentially giving Bombay Creamery a route to building repeat customers if the company can match its pricing with competitive taste and quality.

Reliance has also been building the infrastructure needed to support its broader consumer-goods ambitions. The company has expanded its portfolio beyond its traditional energy and telecommunications businesses into retail and packaged consumer products, giving it multiple channels through which new brands can reach Indian households. The ice cream launch therefore forms part of a much larger strategy to turn Reliance into a major player in the everyday products consumers buy.

The move comes as Ambani continues to transform Reliance from a traditional oil and chemicals conglomerate into a sprawling consumer, retail and technology empire. His group has already built major positions in telecommunications and retail, while Reliance’s consumer-products division has been steadily adding brands and partnerships to its portfolio. The company’s Reliance Retail arm has also become an important distribution platform for international and Indian consumer brands.

Bombay Creamery’s launch therefore represents more than Reliance simply adding ice cream to its product catalogue. It gives Ambani another category in which to deploy the scale of his wider business empire, from pricing and distribution to retail access. If the company succeeds in turning its low starting price into sustained demand, it could put additional pressure on established ice cream makers in one of the world’s largest consumer markets.

For Ambani, the bigger prize may be the consumer spending that sits behind the ice cream. Reliance has been pursuing a strategy of getting its products into more parts of consumers’ daily lives, and an affordable ice cream brand gives the conglomerate another entry point into the household market. The company is betting that its ability to combine low prices with a powerful distribution network can help Bombay Creamery move from a new entrant to a serious competitor.

With products starting at ₹10 and a nationwide expansion planned, Bombay Creamery is entering India’s ice cream market with a strategy that has become familiar across Ambani’s businesses: make the product accessible, use Reliance’s scale to distribute it widely and force established competitors to respond. Whether that formula can disrupt ice cream as dramatically as Jio disrupted telecom remains to be seen, but Ambani has once again chosen a market where price and scale could change the competitive landscape.