Pune was fizzing before Coca-Cola
Ardeshir’s soda was established in Pune in 1884. Coca-Cola’s first drink was served in Atlanta in 1886, placing the Pune business two years earlier. The comparison is not about claiming that Ardeshir’s invented soft drinks; it reveals a less-remembered local history of bottled soda. In Pune Cantonment, a drink that many residents now remember as a Camp classic began as a practical response to demand from the military community. Its survival gives that early date a second life: the old soda is not just a nostalgic flavour, but part of Pune’s food and manufacturing history.
Ardeshir’s began with a Parsi entrepreneur
The business was started by Ardeshir Khodadad Irani, a Parsi entrepreneur who had migrated from Iran and settled in Pune. He built the soda business in Pune Cantonment, a setting where British soldiers created steady demand for soda water. That origin connects several strands of the city’s history: migration, Parsi enterprise and the everyday commercial life of the military community. Ardeshir’s was not initially a distant industrial brand. It was a local business shaped by the needs of people drinking in and around Camp.
