HUL stripped 'health' from Horlicks and Boost after regulators said label doesn't exist

For decades Horlicks and Boost were sold in India as 'health drinks', anchored by Horlicks' famous promise of 'taller, stronger, sharper'. In April 2024 that positioning collapsed: FSSAI said 'health drink' is not defined under the Food Safety and Standards Act, and the Ministry of Commerce directed e-commerce platforms to remove Bournvita, Horlicks and Protinex from the 'health drink' category after NCPCR concluded no such category exists in Indian food law.

HUL reacted by renaming its 'health food drinks' category to 'functional nutritional drinks' (FND) and removing the word from packs. CFO Ritesh Tiwari said FND 'is a much better way to call it'. The stakes were large: Horlicks alone has turnover above ₹2,000 crore and Boost is close to ₹1,000 crore, according to HUL's investor presentation.

The change followed the Bournvita sugar controversy, when a viral video by influencer Revant Himatsingka (FoodPharmer) put malt drinks under scrutiny and NCPCR demanded Mondelez withdraw 'misleading' ads, packaging and labels. CEO Rohit Jawa went on the defensive, insisting a serving of Horlicks contains less than a teaspoon of added sugar and that 'taller, stronger, sharper' is backed by science, while HUL backed the relaunch with 40–50 million door-to-door samples.

The immediate financial hit was muted — HUL reported high single-digit growth for Horlicks and Boost in the March quarter with market-share gains — but the word 'health' was gone from the category's vocabulary, and the company had to spend and communicate defensively to hold the trust that label had bought for decades.

HUL abandoned the 'health' label that anchored decades of Horlicks/Boost marketing, renamed the category, and had to defend sugar and 'taller, stronger, sharper' claims.

For decades the core promise treated a sweetened malt drink as a health product, although no Indian law defined a 'health drink'.

The category name did the selling, letting HUL imply wellness without proof until regulators and a viral sugar exposé made the word untenable.

When NCPCR and FSSAI ruled the term had no legal basis, HUL had no defensible position left and had to rename the category and relabel its flagship brands.

The response was defensive: the CEO rebutted sugar claims publicly while the company spent on 40–50 million door-to-door samples to hold volume.

A positioning built on a word with no legal definition is a liability: when regulators ruled 'health drink' didn't exist, the label — and the trust behind it — had to be rebuilt.

The April 2024 rebrand stuck: HUL kept FND as the category name and said it would dial up nutrition science on packs, and rivals faced the same squeeze as the directive applied across malt-based drinks. Horlicks and Boost kept growing in the short term, but the decades-old promise that a sweetened malt drink was a health product was formally retired; marketing now had to sell 'functional nutrition' instead of 'health'. For agencies and planners, the episode turned a once-safe category claim into a substantiation battleground.