Kurkure’s ‘Tedha Hai Par Mera Hai’ is not really about a snack’s shape. It is about the moment a brand stops apologising for what it is.
The campaign
Kurkure, PepsiCo India’s homegrown snack, launched in 1999 as a playful, Indianised answer to Western-style extruded snacks. By the early 2000s, it had a product truth that most brands would have hidden: the curls were deliberately twisted, uneven and crooked. The campaign that followed turned that ‘tedha’ shape into a statement of belonging. The line ‘Tedha Hai Par Mera Hai’—crooked, but it’s mine—became the brand’s long-running identity. The agency details are less widely documented, but the idea has outlasted the spot.
What the film said and how
The spot works like a family joke. It treats ‘tedha’ as a personality trait, not a manufacturing defect. The snack’s twist becomes a stand-in for human stubbornness, mischief and affection. By placing the phrase in an everyday Indian home, the ad makes the product part of the household’s banter: someone or something is tedha, and that is exactly why they are loved.
That was the craft. Kurkure did not chase a global snack aesthetic. It used colloquial Hindi-English, a familiar domestic situation and a product truth that was already sitting in the packet. The tagline did the heavy lifting.
The response it got
The line became everyday speech. ‘Tedha hai par mera hai’ was used for children, friends, siblings, even India itself. It gave Kurkure a distinct voice in a market where salty snacks were usually sold on flavour and fun, not on attitude. In a category where consumers rarely remember a brand line after the jingle ends, this phrase persisted because it was short, conversational and easy to reuse.
The campaign is still held up as an example of Hinglish advertising that worked because it sounded like the consumer, not like a marketer.
What it changed in the category
It made imperfection a positioning. Indian snack ads had leaned on taste, crunch, family or celebrity charm. Kurkure showed that a brand could pick its most obvious product quirk, name it in the consumer’s language, and build a repeatable creative platform around it.
- Vernacular wordplay became a legitimate brand-building tool, not just a punchline.
- A product’s physical flaw could be converted into emotional ownership.
- The line gave the brand room to refresh stories without changing its meaning.
Where the brand and the idea are now
Kurkure remains one of PepsiCo India’s most visible snack brands, and the tagline still anchors its packaging and communication. The idea has been refreshed for new formats and new faces, but the core remains: own the twist. Few Indian brand lines from that era are still in active use; this one is.
Watch the original: Kurkure on YouTube
