How Can an Ice Cream Cost 10 Cents?
Ten rupees.
About 10 cents.
That is the starting price of an ice cream from Bombay Creamery, a new brand launched in India by Reliance Consumer Products.
It sounds almost impossible.
Ice cream needs milk or cream.
Sugar.
Packaging.
A factory.
Workers.
Transportation.
And unlike a bag of chips, it cannot simply sit in the back of a warm truck.
It has to stay frozen.
So how can someone sell it for 10 rupees?
The answer is not simply that ice cream is cheap to make.
The more interesting part is everything that has to exist around it.
First, This Is Really a 10-Rupee Ice Cream
Bombay Creamery launched in September 2026 with products including sticks, bars, cups, cones and tubs.
Prices start at ₹10.
Reliance also says the products are made with real dairy cream, positioning the brand as affordable without presenting it simply as a cheap frozen substitute.
The company is starting in western India and plans to expand across the country.
That puts it into competition with established names including Amul, Mother Dairy, Vadilal and Kwality Wall's.
But Reliance is bringing something unusual into that fight.
It already has enormous scale.
Reliance Already Has the Stores
Reliance is not a small food company trying to convince India to notice a new brand.
Reliance Retail operates more than 20,000 stores.
Its registered customer base exceeds 396 million people.
During its 2026 financial year, it recorded roughly 1.93 billion customer transactions.
Those numbers do not mean every Reliance store will sell Bombay Creamery.
They show something more important.
Reliance already knows how to put products in front of enormous numbers of consumers.
For a new ice cream brand, that matters.
Because making the ice cream is only the beginning.
The Hard Part Starts After the Factory
Imagine making a chocolate bar.
Once it leaves the factory, distribution is relatively straightforward.
Ice cream is different.
Make a perfect ice cream in Mumbai and you still have a problem:
How do you get it to a small shop hundreds of kilometers away without letting it melt?
That requires a cold chain.
The product has to move through refrigerated storage and transportation until it reaches the retailer.
Then it needs something else.
A freezer.
That freezer may look like an ordinary appliance.
Economically, it is much more important.
The Freezer Is Part of the Business
Walk into a small store.
There is only so much space.
One freezer can hold only so many products.
If one brand gets more of that space, another brand may get less.
This is why ice cream companies can provide branded freezers to retailers.
The freezer does several jobs at once.
It stores the product.
It displays the product.
It advertises the brand.
And most importantly, it gives the product a physical place to exist inside the store.
Reliance already has experience with a similar strategy.
As it expanded its Campa beverage business, the company placed Campa-branded refrigerators in retail stores.
Industry experts now see freezer expansion as one of the advantages Reliance could use as it pushes Bombay Creamery into the ice cream market.
Suddenly, the business is not just about making a better vanilla cone.
It is also about getting the cold box in which that cone can be sold.
And Then There Is the ₹10 Price
Now return to that tiny number.
₹10.
We do not know how much profit Reliance makes on a ₹10 Bombay Creamery product.
The company has not publicly disclosed the unit economics of that product.
So it would be wrong to assume that Reliance is losing money on every cheap ice cream.
But we can ask a different question.
What can a ₹10 price do?
It can make trying the brand easy.
A consumer who has never heard of Bombay Creamery does not have to make a big decision.
Ten rupees.
Try one.
If the customer likes it, the next purchase might be another stick.
Or a cone.
Or a cup.
Or a larger tub for the family.
That is why industry observers are watching whether Reliance can turn first-time buyers into repeat customers.
The ₹10 product does not have to explain the entire business.
It can simply open the door.
The Cheapest Ice Cream Can Require an Expensive System
This is the strange part.
The product can cost only ₹10.
But behind it may sit factories, warehouses, refrigerated transportation, distributors, retailers, freezers, electricity and an enormous consumer network.
That sounds like a contradiction.
It isn't.
Scale changes the question.
A small company might ask:
How much does it cost us to sell this ice cream?
A giant consumer company can ask another question:
How many ice creams can this system sell?
Once a distribution network already exists, another product can potentially travel through parts of an infrastructure the company has spent years building.
And Reliance has an unusually large system.
Its strength is not simply the ability to make ice cream.
It is its combination of pricing, retail reach, distribution and consumer data — advantages industry experts have highlighted as Bombay Creamery enters the market.
The Real Competition May Be for the Freezer
Imagine two ice cream companies.
Both make good products.
Both have competitive prices.
But one has its freezer sitting inside thousands of stores.
When a child walks into the shop on a hot afternoon, which brand does the child see?
That is why physical distribution still matters in a world obsessed with apps and algorithms.
You cannot download an ice cream.
Someone has to manufacture it.
Someone has to freeze it.
Someone has to transport it.
Someone has to give it space inside a store.
And someone has to keep it cold until the exact moment you buy it.
A 10-rupee ice cream may look like one of the simplest products in the world.
The system required to put it in your hand is anything but simple.
The remarkable thing about a 10-cent ice cream isn't just that someone can make it.
It's that someone can keep it frozen all the way to the customer — and make the business work at enormous scale.
BEYOND THE OBVIOUS.
Sources
Reuters — Reliance Enters India's Ice Cream Market With 10-Cent Products
Reliance Industries — Retail Business Overview FY2025-26
Business Standard — Reliance Consumer Launches Bombay Creamery