How Chomps Used Packaging Design to Build a $500M Brand (And What Indian CPG Founders Can Learn)

The quick answer

Chomps grew from a $6,500 bootstrapped startup in 2012 to nearly $500 million in annual revenue by 2024, sold in over 30,000 stores.

A major driver was packaging design: while competitors used identical brown, rugged, camo packaging, Chomps used bright colours and a colour-coded flavour system that made products easy to scan and re-buy on a crowded shelf.

What Chomps got right about packaging design

The meat-snack aisle was a sea of sameness — brown packaging, rustic fonts, camouflage prints, and an aggressive, masculine tone repeated across every brand. Chomps did the opposite. Bright, clean packaging with a distinct colour assigned to every flavour. On a shelf where nothing stood out, Chomps became the thing your eye landed on first.

Why colour-coded packaging drives repeat purchase

Shoppers don't read on a shelf — they scan. In a wall of near-identical brown packs, a customer struggles to find the right flavour, which creates friction and lost sales.

Chomps' colour system removes that friction. Buy a flavour once, and you never search again — you simply look for the colour. This is one of the most underused tools in CPG packaging design, and it directly increases repeat-purchase velocity.

The positioning insight most brands miss

Chomps also spotted what competitors ignored: roughly 70% of meat-snack buyers were women, in a category that had marketed almost exclusively to men for decades. Their brand and packaging didn't look like jerky for truckers — it looked like clean protein for everyone. Design and positioning worked together, not separately.

What this means for Indian CPG and D2C brands

India's D2C and FMCG shelves — both physical and on quick-commerce apps like Blinkit and Zepto — are getting more crowded every month. The most 'boring' categories, where every product looks the same, are often the most open to a design-led challenger.

If your packaging blends in, you're invisible. Clear, differentiated, strategically coloured packaging is one of the fastest ways to stand out.

Sorted Branding is a brand studio helping CPG and consumer brands win on the shelf through naming, brand strategy, identity, and packaging design. If your product deserves packaging that sells, let's talk.