Coca Cola bets big on juice segment; to strengthen Minute Maid brand in India

Beverages major Coca Cola India has trained its guns on the juice segment in India, with the company planning to launch new flavours for their fastest growing juice brand, Minute Maid.
“Our biggest focus currently is on the juices segment. We are looking to launch it in various flavours using raw material from local farmers. Like we recently launched our litchi flavour using litchi from Bihar and Jharkhand and apple flavour using apple from Kashmir,”  President, South West Asia, Coca Cola India, Venkatesh Kini said while talking to the reporters during the sidelines of India Retail Forum 2016.
In 2012, Coca Cola had announced plans to invest US$ 5 billion in India by 2020, and it’s right on track with the opening of five new Greenfield projects in the country over the past few years.
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“Our commitment to India remains high. In the last three years, we’ve commissioned three Greenfield projects that would qualify as mega projects in the respective states where they are coming up. We are in the process of adding five more projects over next five years. These will be used to increase the manufacturing capacity of our various launches that I mentioned and other new launches that are in pipeline,” Kinni said.
The company has 25 global brands and a few local domestic brands in India and said in a statement that it “will continue to look into new categories to expand”.
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The company’s retailer capability development arm – Coca Cola University – also has plans to train 350,000 people by December 2017 in grocery and convenience store retailing and food services.
The training module will be a mix of classroom training and in the Coca Cola University (CCU) bus called Coca Cola University on Wheels. While CCU has been training kirana retailers under its Parivartan program for the last 8 years, the module on quality and food services is being launched this year.
VP, HR and services, Coca Cola India and South West Asia, Sameer Wadhawan, said, “Other than through Parivartan, we are also partners in programmes that are training people with disabilities, farmers in sustainable and efficient agriculture practices etc. We share India’s urgency on skill training and want to do more than our fair share towards this goal.”
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