Coca-Cola launches sports drink Powerade in India
T
he local arm of American beverage maker Coca-Cola on
Wednesday announced the launch of its sports beverage
Powerade that will compete with rival PepsiCo’s Gatorade.
The launch marks the beverage maker’s entry into the
nascent sports hydration market, even as the company
looks to diversify its portfolio to offer more choices to
consumers in India who are seeking beverages over and
above sweetened fizzy drinks.
Coca-Cola India has roped ace Indian cricketer Mahendra
Singh Dhoni to endorse the drink that is priced at 50 for
500 ml, and comes in two flavours, mountain blast and orange
surge. The $2 billion brand, Powerade, is the official sports
drink of the ICC Cricket World Cup 2019.
A growing population of sports and fitness enthusiasts in
India is looking for evolved hydration solutions, said Anoop
Manohar, director, emerging categories, Coca-Cola India.
“The launch reiterates our strategy to drive growth by
expanding our category play and offering consumers more
of the beverages they want for every occasion in their lives,”
Manohar added.
Powerade contains no sugar, the company said in its
announcement.
Coca-Cola’s move to launch the brand in India comes at
a time when increasingly consumers in urban India are
The beverage maker has
initiated talks with its existing
independent franchise bottlers
for the divestment.
seeking variety in both packaged foods and beverages. This
is especially true for consumers looking at healthier options
in a shift from consumption of sweetened beverages.
Over the last few years Coca-Cola has expanded its portfolio
to include more hydration or functional beverages, and
even milk-based drinks in its portfolio that until a few years
ago largely consisted of aerated drinks and bottled water.
The launches include hydration beverages such as Aquarius
and Aquarius Glucocharge; Minute Maid smoothie and VIO
flavoured milk. It has also extended the low or no sugar
variant to key brands, including Thums Up, Coca-Cola and
Sprite. Last year, it launched Minute Maid Vitingo.
“The objective is to move away from the capital intensive,
low margin business of bottling over a period of time, (and)
to accelerate focus on its concentrate business,” one of the
officials told ET.
The beverage maker has initiated talks with its
existing independent franchise bottlers for the
divestment, two officials with direct knowledge of the
development said. The company-owned HCCB has 18 plants and accounts for
two-thirds of Coca-Cola India’s volumes. The beverages
maker has 13 independent franchise bottlers. A Coca-Cola
spokesperson said the company does not comment on
speculative news. “Our existing bottling system is working
well and has provided us with sustained growth in India.
There is no development on that front and we have nothing
to report on the said query,” the person said in an email
revert.Last month, Coca-Cola had announced that it has
dropped plans to refranchise bottling in Africa, instead opting
to retain majority stake in the operations for the time being.
The sell-off transactions, as and when they materialise,
are expected to happen in phases to existing independent
bottling partners individually, and over the long term, they
said. HCCB, which reported revenues of Rs 9,082 crore in
FY18 according to Registrar of Companies filings, is the
US beverage maker’s single largest bottling partner in the
country.
C
oca-Cola India has begun exploring the process of
divesting its asset-heavy bottling partner Hindustan
Coca-Cola Beverages’ plants in line with its global strategy
to refranchise bottling across markets.
Drink Asia
11
July-August 2019