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Time of India
3 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
One summer doesn't tell the story: Coke upbeat on India
Live Events (You can now subscribe to our (You can now subscribe to our Economic Times WhatsApp channel Mumbai: Coca-Cola global chief operating officer Henrique Braun declared consumer demand in India was 'resilient' amid slowing sales across household products and groceries, exacerbated by early onset of monsoon that curtailed sales of summer products, including beverages and colas."We continue to see resilient demand in India. Summer still accounts for a larger percentage all over the world. But what is more important is the overall year equation, how you get events during the year when you can actually increase consumption, and then level off the seasonality moving forward," said Braun. "There are still many occasions that we need to develop for seasonality to actually be lowered. An all-weather mindset is important and the only thing that's going to change is that we are going to pivot fast and make sure we need to be back on track."Demand for fast-moving consumer goods worsened to a two-year low in the March quarter with FMCG volume sales growth of 3.5%, according to global research firm Kantar. However, Coca-Cola saw double-digit volume growth in the quarter due to higher inventory stocking before the onset of India's monsoon, the earliest since 2009, impacted sales growth of summer goods including beverages and ice-cream, which counts April-June as their peak company behind Maaza and Thums Up , however, said market measurements don't fully factor ecommerce sales, especially quick commerce in cities, which have been seeing highest demand pressure over the past year."So, if you think about the urban, not only the sales that you get through the normal channels, but the whole ecosystem (has to be factored in). That math is not easily done as some of the market measurements don't capture everything. It's all happening in the urban, not necessarily in the rural," added Braun. "India has accelerated tremendously in digitisation. One of the things that was, to me, an eye opener as well, in terms of another channel that's developing here is the quick commerce that is very unique to India. It's accelerating, every time I come in, it's bigger."India is Atlanta-based Coca-Cola's fifth largest market by volume. Globally and well as in India, shifting consumer tastes are prompting beverage companies, including Coca-Cola and Pepsi , to find ways to diversify from traditional soda and high-calorie juices to low calories versions.
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Business Standard
4 days ago
- Business
- Business Standard
Limca becomes Rs 2,800-crore brand in 2024, says Coca-Cola India
Limca, a lime and lemon-flavoured drink, has crossed the Rs 2,800-crore revenue mark in 2024, helped by its expansion in rural and urban areas. The five-decades-old brand is witnessing strong double-digit growth in key states such as Delhi, Punjab and Haryana, gaining share across both traditional trade and emerging retail formats, according to a statement released by Coca-Cola India. Since its inception in 1971, Limca has been a driving force in strengthening the company's sparkling portfolio, with demand soaring across both urban and rural markets, it added. Currently, Coca-Cola has three billion-dollar brands -- Thums Up, Sprite and Maaza in its India portfolio. Thums Up is now very close to becoming a $2 billion brand. Maaza, Thums Up and Limca were acquired by The Coca-Cola Company in 1993, when the Atlanta-headquartered company had re-entered the Indian market, from Ramesh Chauhan of Parle Bisleri. Coca-Cola had then bought the entire portfolio of aerated drinks from the Chauhan brothers, which also included Gold Spot. Vinay Nair, Vice President, Franchise Operations, Developing Markets, Coca-Cola India and Southwest Asia, said Limca's story is one of resilience, reinvention, and a pursuit of excellence. Our success is anchored in a simple but powerful playbook - innovating products that cater to evolving consumer needs, expanding distribution to both urban and rural India, and executing marketing campaigns that connect passion and purpose," he said. In 2024 Coca-Cola extended Limca in the hydration space. It had introduced Limca GlucoCharge, a beverage with glucose and electrolytes and its launch campaign had featured Olympic gold medalist Neeraj Chopra. In India its beverage range includes Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Thums Up, Fanta, Limca, Sprite, Maaza, Minute Maid range of juices and Honest Tea.
Time of India
4 days ago
- Business
- Time of India
Limca becomes Rs 2,800-crore brand in 2024, says Coca-Cola India
Limca, a lime and lemon-flavoured drink, has crossed the Rs 2,800-crore revenue mark in 2024, helped by its expansion in rural and urban areas. The five-decades-old brand is witnessing strong double-digit growth in key states such as Delhi, Punjab and Haryana, gaining share across both traditional trade and emerging retail formats, according to a statement released by Coca-Cola India. Since its inception in 1971, Limca has been a driving force in strengthening the company's sparkling portfolio, with demand soaring across both urban and rural markets, it added. Play Video Pause Skip Backward Skip Forward Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration 0:00 Loaded : 0% 0:00 Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 1x Playback Rate Chapters Chapters Descriptions descriptions off , selected Captions captions settings , opens captions settings dialog captions off , selected Audio Track default , selected Picture-in-Picture Fullscreen This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Text Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Caption Area Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Opacity Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Drop shadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like If you eat ginger every day for a month, your body will experience the following phenomena Tips and Tricks Undo Currently, Coca-Cola has three billion-dollar brands -- Thums Up, Sprite and Maaza in its India portfolio. Thums Up is now very close to becoming a USD 2 billion brand. Maaza, Thums Up and Limca were acquired by The Coca-Cola Company in 1993, when the Atlanta-headquartered company had re-entered the Indian market, from Ramesh Chauhan of Parle Bisleri. Live Events Coca-Cola had then bought the entire portfolio of aerated drinks from the Chauhan brothers, which also included Gold Spot. Vinay Nair, Vice President, Franchise Operations, Developing Markets, Coca-Cola India and Southwest Asia, said Limca's story is one of resilience, reinvention, and a pursuit of excellence. "Our success is anchored in a simple but powerful playbook - innovating products that cater to evolving consumer needs, expanding distribution to both urban and rural India, and executing marketing campaigns that connect passion and purpose," he said. In 2024 Coca-Cola extended Limca in the hydration space. It had introduced Limca GlucoCharge, a beverage with glucose and electrolytes and its launch campaign had featured Olympic gold medalist Neeraj Chopra. In India its beverage range includes Coca-Cola, Diet Coke, Thums Up, Fanta, Limca, Sprite, Maaza, Minute Maid range of juices and Honest Tea. PTI
Scroll.in
21-05-2025
- Scroll.in
In a new book, the former ACP of Mumbai Police recalls how he arrested serial killer Charles Sobhraj
Shashi Raut ordered his third Thums Up – three more than he had drunk in the last 13 years. The sugar kept him alert as he waited. This was already his second evening of waiting at Goa's famous O'Coqueiro Bar and Restaurant, located in Porvorim, just off the Mumbai-Goa highway. Shashi's friends sat inside the bar with their beers. O'Coqueiro's famous chicken cafreal went wonderfully with it. They were all trying to enjoy the India–Pakistan hockey match on the TV, but their attention was routinely diverted by the boisterous wedding party in progress. Loud, merry and very Goan, the generous hosts were welcoming of anyone who wanted to join the evening's revelry. At 11 pm, the party was just getting started. Shashi was not interested in any of this. Sitting at the table near the entrance of the bar, he kept an eye on every car that stopped at the entrance of O'Coqueiro. Thanks to the party, there were not too many more visitors today. He briefly scanned every face; he knew he would not need to look too closely. Even though he had last seen the man he sought nearly ten years ago, he knew that he would recognise him immediately. For the last five days, Shashi had put his entire life on hold, his sole purpose being to hunt down this one man. He had gone to great lengths – even giving up his name – for this singular quest. He had left his home in Mumbai; his wife and three children had only a vague idea of his whereabouts. Since his quarry had killed more than 20 people already and was known to carry a gun in his pocket, there was no telling if they would ever see him again. But Shashi had long stopped thinking about that. He was living at the Taj Hermitage, Goa's best hotel, located in Sinquerim, that was clearly beyond his means, pretending to be someone he was not, just so he could put this man away forever. Was there anything he would stop at to accomplish his mission, he wondered. All because he knew – no, he believed – that if anyone could find this man and prevent another string of deaths, it was he, Shashi Raut. The man was a robber, fraudster, confidence trickster, and strangler, killer and immolator of men and women across countries. Thanks to an Interpol Red corner notice, the police in at least one hundred countries were looking for him. His last string of victims was overland Western hippie travellers in Thailand and Nepal. Goa had plenty of those, and would have been the perfect base for him. He might have been hunting already. Gurmukh Charles Sobhraj was born in war-torn Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City), Vietnam. His father, Hotchand Sobhraj, was an influential and successful Indian-origin businessman based there. Charles's Vietnamese mother, Noi, was a survivor. She had escaped her abjectly poor childhood and started working as an assistant in Hotchand's tailoring shop, and became the mother of his two children. When her relationship with Hotchand was looking unlikely to result in marriage, she married a French armyman, Jacques Roussel, who had been forced out of his desk job to fight the Viet Minh on the ground. When Jacques could not bear the fighting any longer, he and Noi moved back to France. Charles reluctantly moved with them. Since Vietnam had been a French colony, in those days, it was possible for Sobhraj to get French citizenship. However, he turned to crime very early in life, and it took persistent efforts by his stepfather to get him this passport. Sobhraj had a troubled childhood, struggling to find a stable home and a sense of belonging. Starting as a street hustler, he graduated to gambling, theft and stealing cars. He progressively built up his reputation as a conman, fraudster, thief, armed robber, and of course, a killer. His biographers, Richard Neville and Julie Clarke, describe Charles as 'an incorrigible criminal whose career [sent] the world's press into paroxysms of grisly prose'. The man had admitted to killing at least a dozen people, although he also recanted that confession.2 Interpol's Red notice meant that all of its hundred-plus member nations were required to arrest Sobhraj whether or not he was wanted in their country. 'The first killing he confessed to, according to his biographers, was a Pakistani taxi driver in 1972. But it is in Thailand where his alleged murder spree ramped up.' He had killed the taxi driver, put his corpse in the car's boot and kept driving. Later, when the stench became too overwhelming, he threw the dead man into a stream that they were passing. Reuters reported that he was also wanted for the murder of six bikini-clad women in Pattaya, Thailand, in 1975. In October 1975, he befriended and killed American citizen Teresa Knowlton, who was headed to a Buddhist monastery. For a few hundred dollars' worth of possessions, Sobhraj drugged her, and when she was unconscious, changed her into a bikini and then drowned her. Her body was found in the Gulf of Thailand, earning Sobhraj the moniker 'Bikini Killer'. In 1976, two charred bodies were found near Ayutthaya in Thailand. They were later identified as a Dutch couple, Henricus Bintanja and Cornelia Hemker. Charles Sobhraj was convicted in a Thai court of having befriended, drugged, killed and burned this couple. In October 1975, Sobhraj is reported to have also killed a Turkish man, Vitali 'Ved' Hakim, whose charred body was found in some fields in the vicinity of the gem mines of Chanthaburi. A few days later he killed Ved's friend, Stephanie Barry, who had tried to investigate his death. The same year, he visited Nepal, where he killed a Canadian woman, Connie Jo Bronzich, and her American friend, Laurent Carriere. He was convicted of these murders decades later, and served 19 years in a Nepal jail. In both convictions, diligent investigations conducted by former Dutch diplomat Hermann Knippenberg are said to have helped significantly. During this period, he also visited India, and he was reported to have killed Israeli scholar Avoni Jacob and also Frenchman Jean-Luc Solomon. He liked to cast his net wide and befriend many people. Many of them saw him in possession of several passports. Possibly, he had murdered some or all of the passport owners. He was known to doctor the passports and travel around the world using them. He is said to have killed his own accomplice, Ajay Chowdhry, in Malaysia. In 1976, he used one such stolen passport and escaped from Thailand to India. In India, he was wanted for several crimes by then, but he managed to stay ahead of the police. That was until desperation and an alert hotel manager did him in. Raut and Sobhraj's connection went back a long time – 16 years to be precise. It began when Charles first appeared in Indian newspaper headlines in 1970.
Economic Times
15-05-2025
- Business
- Economic Times
Zerodha CEO Nithin Kamath spots worrying trend from a recent earnings call
Nithin Kamath, co-founder and CEO of Zerodha, raised alarm over rising soft drink consumption in India, citing recent earnings commentary from beverage major Coca-Cola. In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, Kamath said the trend is especially concerning given India's position as the epicentre of the global diabetes crisis. ADVERTISEMENT "Here's something worrying from a recent earnings call of a beverage maker: Indian's are consuming more soft drinks than ever. Even Indian companies have said something similar. Remember, India is at the epicentre of the global diabetes epidemic," Kamath wrote. blockquote class="twitter-tweet"p lang="en" dir="ltr"Here's something worrying from a recent earnings call of a beverage maker: Indian's are consuming more soft drinks than ever. Even Indian companies have said something similar. Remember, India is at the epicentre of the global diabetes epidemic. a href=" Nithin Kamath (@Nithin0dha) a href=" 15, 2025/a/blockquote script async src=" charset="utf-8"/script The Zerodha CEO attached a screenshot from Coca-Cola's Q1 2025 earnings call, which detailed robust growth in India. 'In India, we had strong volume growth across our portfolio of global and local brands. Our system added nearly 350,000 outlets and increased household penetration. Also, our system increased cooler placement and added approximately 100,000 customers to its digital customer platforms,' the company said. Coca-Cola reported double-digit volume growth in India for the quarter ended March 2025, driven by its flagship Coca-Cola brand and regional favourite Thums Up. ADVERTISEMENT 'In India, trademark Coca-Cola and Thums Up, a cherished regional brand, are fuelling consumers and contributing to double-digit volume growth for the market in the first quarter,' the company said in its earnings is currently the fifth largest market for the Atlanta-based beverage giant. ADVERTISEMENT Kamath's concern about surging soft drink consumption is tied to India's growing diabetes burden. In the same post, he resurfaced an earlier warning he had issued in 2024.'Diabetes is a ticking time bomb for India. We have the largest number of people with diabetes in the world,' he wrote last year. ADVERTISEMENT He pointed to a 2024 study that estimated 21 crore Indians are currently living with diabetes. 'If you're a 20-year-old woman living in a city today, you have a 64.6% chance of developing diabetes during your lifetime. If you're a young man, your risk is also quite high at 55.5%,' Kamath highlighted the lack of awareness and treatment among diabetics in India. 'About 27.5% of people with diabetes don't even know they have it. Even if they do know, very few people get treatment.'With less than 20% of Indians having health insurance, Kamath warned that the out-of-pocket expenses are a major financial burden for low-income households. 'What makes this a serious crisis is that less than 20% of Indians have health insurance,' he noted. ADVERTISEMENT Kamath stressed that India's diabetes crisis needs a multi-pronged solution. 'There's no magic bullet to solve this issue. We need multiple approaches, from public awareness campaigns, insurance coverage for the poor and vulnerable, to introducing early detection programs,' he simple lifestyle changes can be effective, he added. 'Simple lifestyle changes, like adding a few extra minutes of exercise each day or reducing time spent sitting, can make a big difference.'Kamath said Zerodha has been supporting startups working on health and wellness, but emphasised that tackling diabetes will require coordinated action from individuals, businesses, and the government. Also read | 'Don't make this mistake': Nithin Kamath has a subtle advice on trading uncertainty in next few days (Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of the Economic Times) (You can now subscribe to our ETMarkets WhatsApp channel)
