Coca-Cola India posts robust double-digit growth in Q1, says T Krishnakumar

Riding on the four pillars of growth that Coca-Cola India had set last for itself year, the company has shown three quarters of sequential improvement and growth.

“Every single launch in the last three quarters has met reasonable to good success while Q1 saw robust double-digit volume growth,” said T Krishnakumar, President, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia.

Exactly 12 months back, Coca-Cola decided to make the company bigger than its most loved brands. Aiming to make Coca-Cola the people’s choice globally and in India, the company started working on four pillars of growth.

The first pillar was to make its core portfolio refreshing and renewing to make it relevant and exciting to its consumers. The second pillar for the brand was to create a good local portfolio based on consumer insights in India by looking at what the Indian buyers want and provide the same to them. The third pillar was to become a contributor to the Indian socio-economic growth. Therefore, Coca-Cola got into agriculture and horticulture to create a fruit circular economy. The fourth pillar was to take its brands to the neighbouring countries and beyond that.

Krishnakumar said, “All these actions that we are taking in a 360 manner are helping us to keep building the momentum of the business, which is helping us in delivering a robust growth for business in India.”

Altogether, in a year’s time frame, the brand has launched around nine fruit-based drinks and is set to make its foray in the frozen fruit category under the Minute Maid brand.

Coca-Cola launched Thums Up Charge with no sugar early in April and sometime ago launched Rimzim, which has now scaled up and is now available in 50% of the country.

Realising the potential of Maaza of becoming a billion-dollar mango juice brand by 2023, it launched the premium mango drink Maaza Gold in last December.

With an aim to add to the fruit economy of India, Coca-Cola introduced the Mosambi variant of the Minute Maid brand.

Krishnakumar said, “We launched mosambi, which is not an easy fruit to manage and not grown in abundance in India, but we went and launched Minute Maid pulpy juice. We have received an overwhelming response from the consumers of India.”

Coca-Cola has also tied up with the government of Maharashtra and Jain Irrigation for better yield per acre of citrus fruits in India. “We are also helping the farmers in India to improve the fruits per yield. In India, the yield per acre is not as per global standards. The cost per fruit is very high and the juice we get as per standards is not that good for pulping.”

Coca-Cola also added 10% orange juice in the Gujarat region of India.

Recently, Coca-Cola set its feet in Bangladesh with the launch of Thums Up and Rimzim in the neighbouring country.

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