DELHI: More than 16 years ago Coca-Cola was given an ultimatum by the leftist who governed India at the time reveal the drinks secret formula or go.
Coca-Cola left in a huff only to return last Christmas ready to fight Pepsi for India’s potentially colossal beverages market
After Coca-Cola pulled out Indians had nothing to gulp down but sickly imitations of the real thing such as Campa-Cola whose trademark is a copy of Coca-Cola’s but whose product tastes like sweet effervescent mud Profiting from the Congress government’s recent economic reforms Pepsi thought it safe to enter the country through partnership with Lehar a big local drinks firm Now the Cola wars are bubbling in India. First fights have broken out between the gangs of Pepsi and Coca-Cola sign painters vying for choice street-comer hoardings. And when Coca-Cola had its muted launch at a bottling plant in Agta near the ‘Taj Mahal Pepsi plastered huge advertisements all around In Bombay Pepsi trucks were hijacked
Even without Pepsi’s rivalry Coca Cola is beset by worries The Communists see Coke’s reappear ance as a symbol of India’s selling out to imperialism. They claim they can rally 200,000 students for a protest demonstration next month in Delhi to demand that Coca. Cola and Pepsi quit India
Few Indians have even tasted Coke. Distribution is sluggish and only a few hotels and fast-food restaurants in the big cities stock it Coca-Cola’s re-entry into India was masterminded by Ramesh Chauhan a U.S.-educated Indian widely held responsible for persuading the leftist Janata government to have Coca-Cola kicked out
With Coca-Cola gone Chauhan’s four soft drink brands Thums‘Up Limca Maaz and Sprint became best-sellers. Coca-Cola executives are using him to handle the drink’s bottling and marketing throughout the country. In exchange Coke brought out Chauhan’s soft drinks for $6) million.
For Coca-Cola’s launch Chauhan stood beside the multinational’s senior vice-president Neville Is dell and discreetly flashed a thumbs-up sign. Thums Up is India’s most popular soft drink with a 60% market share Competitive though Coca-Cola might be it will probably continue selling Thums-Up until it has won over tricky Indian taste buds Chauhan is thought to have called ‘a truce with Coca-Cola when he realized that the multinational’s comeback to India was inevitable and that his company alone could not tackle the two drinks giants. India has more than 870 million thirsty people but have Pepsi and Coca-Cola overestimated the size of the soft drinks market in a court try where 40% are poor and man consider themselves lucky to have clean water? Indians imbibe only direct of focus soft drinks a year compared with the 750 bottles guzzled yearly by Americans.
Pepsi’s snack food and drinks operation in India has shown losses of $29.5 million but both multinationals are eyeing the ur ban middle class of 94 million ‘They can afford colas which a about 25¢ a bottle are far cheap than in Canada.
Article extracted from this publication >> March 11, 1994
