RIP Red Bull?

This tiny candy costs just ₹2. That's the price of the toffee your kirana uncle hands you when he doesn't have change. Each candy carries 40mg of caffeine. That's more than half of what you get in a ₹125 can of Red Bull.

It's called ENRJI. It launched this week with just 100 jars, and they sold out in under four minutes.

Now, most people will look at this as just another internet drop. But to me, this entire space of energy drinks, caffeine and pre-workouts is very interesting.

There's a lot to unpack, so let's get started. In this article, I want to cover:

• quick context
• who is the user?
• what's the market size?
• why this product makes sense
• Indian regulations with "energy"
• what is this products' defensibility?
• what directions i think the product can go?
• fin.

quick context

So what exactly is this ₹2 toffee? ENRJI is a small candy. Each one weighs 3.5g, carries 40mg of caffeine and costs ₹2. Think of it as a dose of caffeine you can keep in your pocket.

Those first 100 jars went on sale on 23 October and were sold out in just 4 mins. I'm not surprised to be honest - the product makes a lot of sense and Chirag has been building distribution and trust over the last few years

A Mumbai launch on quick-commerce and in shops comes next month.

If you don't know already, the founders are Chirag and Abheet. Chirag Barjatya runs PFC Club, a fitness and wellness business. Chirag's co-founder, Abheet Singh Bagga, was associate director of brand and marketing at SuperYou.

The user

Fitness folks are the start.

Search for caffeine tablets on Amazon and you'll find bottles of 60 to 120 tablets, each with 200mg of caffeine, for about ₹400 to ₹475. That works out to under ₹2 to over ₹3 for every 100mg of caffeine.

And then there are India's gig workers: about 1.2 crore of them. The people who need ₹2 are the ones who made Sting a hit.

I don't think Chirag and Co are targeting the gig economy, but it's a very interesting market that they can, if they wanted to.

The market

So how big is this market? India's energy market, three ways.

TAM: everything India buys for energy. Energy drinks sell about ₹9,500 to 12,000 crore a year. Sports drinks add about ₹650 to 700 crore, and energy bars about ₹160 to 240 crore. That's about ₹10,500 to 13,000 crore a year, and more once you count glucose powders like Glucon-D and caffeine supplements.

SAM: energy that comes from caffeine. That's energy drinks, about ₹9,500 to 12,000 crore a year. Sting alone is roughly ₹4,000 crore of it at shop prices.

SOM: A common rule of thumb is that a new brand wins 1 to 5% of its SAM by year three. That's about ₹100 to 600 crore a year for a typical new brand.

Why this product makes sense?

1/ Cost &
2/ Commitment.

let's start with commitment:

This the sachetization of caffeine.

Think about how you buy a tub of pre-workout or a bottle of tablets. You plan it, you order it, and you keep it at home. Once ENRJI reaches shops, a ₹2 candy is a decision you make at the counter.

This is one of the oldest tricks in Indian FMCG. In 1983, Chik shampoo launched in 10ml sachets at 50 paise each, and the rest is history.

Then comes cost

Per milligram of caffeine, ENRJI is over 5X cheaper than Sting and 33X cheaper than Red Bull. And it sells the same 40mg dose as Neuro for a twelfth of the price.

Two things make it cheaper.

Tax. Sugar confectionery pays just 5% GST, and caffeinated drinks pay 40%. If ENRJI is taxed like other candy, the government takes about 10 paise of every ₹2.

Weight. A bottle of Sting is 250ml of mostly water. It has to be bottled, trucked and, ideally, kept cold. An ENRJI weighs 3.5g. A jar of 150 sits on a shop counter with no fridge at all.

Why this product makes sense to me: I keep coming back to how natural this product feels. Buying caffeine as a candy takes very little explanation. I can see where it would fit in my day, and that makes me curious about what else could work in a format like this.

That's part of what excites me about India's consumer market. There are familiar needs that we can keep finding different ways to serve. Energy is a particularly interesting one. Fitness gives us an easy place to start, but the need for caffeine extends into all kinds of working lives.

Indian regulations with "energy"

India's caffeine rules are written for drinks. Since 2016, FSSAI has capped caffeinated drinks at 145 to 300mg per litre, and the label has to carry a caffeine warning.

This year, FSSAI went further. On 30 June 2026, it told every high-caffeine drink to drop two words from its label within 90 days: "energy drink". FSSAI says it has never set a standard for an "energy drink". PepsiCo told the Delhi High Court that 49.2 crore bottles and 2.6 crore cans with the old label were already in the market. The court has since let old stock be sold, and the main hearing is on 5 November.

So where does that leave ENRJI? We couldn't find an FSSAI rule written for caffeine in candy, and ENRJI's FAQ calls it "an energy candy".

What is this products' defensibility?

Honestly, only time will tell. FMCG is a hard business, and anyone can make a caffeine candy. But big companies often need a very large market potential before they actually get serious.

Why didn't Hindustan Unilever build its own Minimalist? It had the factories, the shelves and the money. Instead, in January 2025, it agreed to pay ₹2,670 crore for 90.5% of Minimalist.

In FY24, Minimalist's revenue was ₹347 crore. HUL's was ₹59,579 crore. Minimalist was about 0.6% of HUL. For a listed giant, a few hundred crore of revenue is never going to be massive, which is why we keep seeing giants buy instead of build.

What directions i think the product can go?

There are four ways this can go

1/ Depth: more products in the same format.
For ENRJI, that could mean a 20mg candy for the afternoon slump, a stronger dose for the gym, or a no-caffeine candy for the night. Most things dosed in milligrams fit in a 3.5g candy. Anything you need in grams, like protein, needs a different format.

2/ Frequency: more moments in a day.
For ENRJI, some moments are rare: race day, a deadline night, a long drive. Some are daily: every shift, every red light. But caffeine has a ceiling. So past a point, growth has to come from new packs and new buyers.

3/ Same product in different pack sizes
For ENRJI, that could mean ₹2 singles at the kirana, a pocket tin for the gym bag, bigger jars for gyms and offices, and bulk orders for delivery fleets. Online, it matters too: today, shipping a jar from ENRJI's website costs ₹99, so bigger bundles make the shipping worth it.

4/ The same product, for new people. Sting is the best example. At ₹20, it took energy drinks from Red Bull's buyers to e-rickshaw drivers and 18-to-30-year-olds, according to The Ken.

For ENRJI, it starts with gym-goers. Then come the daily-wage workers who made Sting a ₹20 habit, and India's gig workers. Then college students and desk workers, night shifts and drivers.

What I'd watch from here

My hypothesis is that fitness alone could take ENRJI to its first ₹5-20 crore. The founders know that audience, caffeine is already part of its routine, and selling jars online could build a meaningful early business.

Second direction is kirana stores, but this is a highly unlikely route. Reaching the much larger market of workers means getting the candy into the shops they already buy from. That requires two people to see value in ₹2: the person eating the candy and the person selling it.

For the shopkeeper, the question is how much the jar earns, how quickly it sells, and how easily it gets restocked.

But there is another possible role for this product. Which is far more likely.

Given the founders’ fitness and wellness background, they would have a wider product range in mind, the candy will be an inexpensive first purchase that gets someone to try the brand.

Someone discovers ENRJI through a ₹2 candy, likes the experience, buys it again, and becomes more willing to try another product from the same company. In that model, the candy earns its own revenue and helps acquire customers for the rest of the range.

Fin.

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