Background

During the late 1970s, the American cola giant Coca-Cola abandoned operations in India rather than make a forced sale of 60% of their equity to an Indian company. [1] Following this, the Parle brothers, Ramesh Chauhan and Prakash Chauhan, along with then CEO Bhanu Vakil, launched Thums Up as their flagship drink, adding to their portfolio of older brands Limca (lime flavour) and Gold Spot (orange flavour). Thums Up was basically a cola drink, but the company never claimed it as such. The formula was just as closely guarded as the famous Coke formula. During the same time, the owners of Coca-Cola’s bottling plant, Pure Drinks Ltd., launched Campa Cola and Campa Orange, both of which had a higher dose of carbon dioxide.
Manmad Hill
Typical bottle of Thums Up

The Thums Up logo was a red 'thumbs up' hand gesture with a slanted white san-serif typeface. This would later be modified by Coca-Cola with blue strokes and a more modern-looking typeface. This was mainly done to reduce the dominant red color in their signage. The picture shows the Thums Up mountain or, Thums Up pahaad (in Hindi), Manmad hills which has a natural top like the thums up logo and is a popular sight from trains. Its famous caption until the early 1980s was, “Happy days are here again”, coined by then famous copywriter Vasant Kumar, whose father was spiritual philosopher U. G. Krishnamurti. Later it was changed to "Taste the thunder!".