From screens to merchandise, and now to your coffee and biscuits, global icons such as Harry Potter and Pikachu are entering India’s grocery aisles via snacks, chocolates and cafe experiences.
Through collaborations with intellectual property (IP) owners, packaged consumer goods brands are seeking to expand their market beyond children to ‘kidult’ consumers by tapping into millennials’ and Gen Zers’ nostalgia to drive engagement.
There's a sizeable market waiting to be unlocked. “While exact splits vary by campaign and category, internal estimates and market trends suggest that anywhere between 40-60% of participation in food and beverage (F&B)-led licensing collaborations in urban India today can be attributed to the ‘kidult’ cohort: millennials and Gen Z,” said Mitali Desai co-founder and chief operating officer of brand licensing specialist Black White Orange Brands Pvt. Ltd.
Halo effect
What was once considered incidental spillover demand from adults is now central to campaign design. The strategy is clear: tap into the deep emotional equity of franchises to drive impulse purchases, repeat consumption, and social amplification, particularly among “kidults”, who have the purchasing power.
"Globally, brand licensing is a $300+ billion business, with North America cornering the largest share, followed by Europe and Asia-Pacific,” said Jiggy George, founder and chief executive of brand licensing and merchandising company Dream Theatre. "India is growing fast from a smaller base, and food and beverage promotions are an important entry point here because they bring global IP into everyday, high-frequency categories,” he added.
Recent launches point to the playbook. Nestlé’s KitKat rolled out a limited-edition One Piece collaboration in April, while Starbucks India ran a Harry Potter-themed experience in March. While Britannia’s Jim Jam featured Marvel characters in March, Pokémon-themed Oreo packs have been on shelves since early 2025. Britannia Treat Creme Wafers teamed up with Naruto, and Good Flippin' Burgers launched a Squid Game-inspired menu.
It's a well-coordinated push to embed fandom into everyday consumption amid growing adult participation.
The Indian toy market stood at $1.9 billion in 2024, accounting for 0.5% of the global market, according to Kotak Securities, while US-based market research firm Circana noted that 28% of global toy sales were driven by “kidults”. This is expected to flow into F&B collaborations. In fact, "India is one of our most robust licensing businesses," said Alex Baillie, vice president and general manager, South Asia Pacific, Disney Consumer Products, the retailing and licensing subsidiary of the Disney Experiences segment of the Walt Disney Co.
For brands, the appeal lies in what marketers describe as the “halo effect”.
“Consumers already have an emotional connection with the franchise and are naturally more excited to engage with the experience around the product,” said Siddharth Gupta, vice-president of marketing at Britannia.
Even when a millennial has grown out of consuming biscuits, they are drawn to the IP as a collectable. “The starting point is always to ensure the collaboration feels natural to the product and the franchise it is associated with, rather than designing for one age group alone,” Gupta said.
Strong opportunity
However, it is not easy for IP owners to choose which F&B brand to collaborate with. "In categories like F&B, where margins are tight, and volumes matter, brands don’t enter licensing partnerships with low sales expectations,” Desai noted. “In fact, most campaigns are designed to outperform baseline sales, using the IP as a catalyst for higher offtake, better shelf visibility, and faster rotation,” she added.
Packaging, in this context, becomes more than a visual hook. For younger consumers, familiar characters drive instant recognition and shelf visibility. For millennials, the same imagery taps into nostalgia, reinforcing brand affinity and increasing the likelihood of trial. This also increases the product's “instagrammability”.
“What social-first, visually strong collaborations do really well is give the product talkability: people photograph it, post unboxings, and share the experience, which amplifies reach organically,” said George. For example, Kinder Joy launched the limited-edition Harry Potter Funko Pop toy collection in India in September 2024. This triggered a frenzy among content creators, all vying to complete the full toy collection.
Companies track a variety of indicators to measure the success of the collaboration. "From a performance standpoint, F&B collaborations typically deliver double-digit uplifts in sales during campaign periods, particularly in impulse categories like confectionery and biscuits,” said Desai.
“Limited-edition drops, on-pack promotions, and collectables tend to increase offtake velocity by 15-30% over baseline in the initial weeks, with stronger spikes when supported by a major content release,” she added.
Just until a few years ago, merchandising was a tough business in India, filled with cheap knockoffs. According to industry executives, the opportunity is still underpenetrated.
“While character licensing is a nascent industry in India, we are seeing increasingly diverse local tie-ups—a strong indicator of businesses’ growing interest in exploring character licensing,” said Baillie. “There is an especially large untapped potential in the FMCG and F&B spaces, where familiar characters can add a delightful touch to everyday moments,” he added.