The Hindu Business Line : Coca-Cola retail school will run on wheels

New Delhi, Dec. 4 Coca-Cola India, which had recently announced plans of setting up a retail school in the country, said that it intends to adopt an entirely new model of schooling; there won’t be a single bricks and mortar structure but training will be done through mobile vans with a focus more on training owners of small mom ’n pop stores.

Mr Atul Singh, President and CEO, Coca-Cola India, told Business Line: “Ours is going to be done with a totally different approach. In fact, we will have greater focus on mom ’n pop stores. Since most of these stores are run by single individuals who cannot afford to come and attend conventional classes, we will have mobile vans that will get retail trainers to these outlets and educate the store owners.”

Coca-Cola distribution network covers one million retailers in the country.

The idea is to provide Indian retailers with the right techniques, tools and knowledge to operate in the new retail environment, said Mr Singh, adding that the final format for the schools had still not been finalised.

“We are still discussing the final blueprint and should be announcing the details very soon,” he said. A pilot will be tested before the project is rolled out, literally.

On job opportunities and the company’s focus on sourcing, Mr Singh said, “We have created over 1.5 lakh jobs directly and indirectly. Most of the indirect jobs created consist of people who we source our sugar and mango pulp from as well as several middlemen who help us in getting the sourced objects to their rightful destinations. In fact, we prefer to keep the middlemen in the loop of things because of the various value additions they do to the entire process in terms of sorting and transportation.”

Talking on the company’s focus on its hot beverage category, Mr Singh said, “We have already said that we will focus our energies on creating a balance between the sparkling and the non-sparkling beverages. Within the non- sparkling beverages, the hot beverages category dominated by our ready-to-drink coffee brand Georgia holds a lot of importance. It is a niche business and we are rapidly developing it.”

Coffee exporter

“Most people do not know this, but Coca-Cola India is the country’s second largest exporter of coffee, to countries such as Japan,” pointed out Vice-President-Marketing, Coca-Cola India, Mr Venkatesh Kini.

On the change in the company’s marketing approach, Mr Kini said: “We have changed and evolved our marketing and advertising approach over the past few years. Today, we have a more 360 degree approach of things, where focus is equal on above-the-line as well as below-the-line campaigns.”

The company recently unveiled an umbrella campaign that featured all the brands that Coca-Cola has in India.

In response to a question, Mr Singh, without disclosing figures, said that in most categories Coca-Cola is present in, it claims to be a market leader.

Water, as a category, however, is much too fragmented with 1,800 brands, for a single player to have any dominance. The company which announced a $250 million further investment in the country (it has already invested $1.2 billion) will see this investment go into expansion of manufacturing capacities, product launches of new brands and building its sales and distribution network.

It recently also embarked on a five- pronged approach involving people, planet, portfolio, partners and performance.

Mr Singh said the company had seen double digit growth over the past five quarters and the trend will continue.

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