Early rains, geopolitical tensions hit Coca-Cola India sales volume in June quarter

New Delhi, Jul 22 (PTI) Beverages major The Coca-Cola Company's sales volume declined in India in the June quarter, impacted by early rains in the country and geopolitical tensions.

Despite the volume decline in the second quarter, which ended June 27, Coca-Cola is "bullish on India" and is "pretty confident", said James Quincey, Chairman and CEO of The Coca-Cola Company, during an investors' call.

The company had a good start in the June quarter, which is the peak season for sales of beverages products, however, early arrivals of monsoon impacted it, said Quincey.

"In India, after a strong start of the year, volume declined as our business was impacted by early monsoons and geopolitical conflict (India-Pakistan conflict) early in the important summer season," he said.

In response, now Coca-Cola is developing more granular channel and customer specific execution strategies, driving more tailored promotions and accelerating placements of coolers.

The cola major is "engaging consumers with integrated marketing campaigns like Coca-Cola meals supported by execution in the QSR channels, Thumbs up with Biryani, Sprite with spicy meals and Maaza with festivals and tailing these activations to regional and local needs," said Quincey.

Also, its system is adding customer outlets in India and recently surpassed one million customers on its digital ordering platforms, he added.

While responding to a query on outlook for India market, Quincey said: "In the case of India, its never going to be a straight line and indeed Q2 was not. But we are very bullish on India overall. We have a lot of marketing campaigns focused on India." About the company's deal with Jubilant Bhartia Group, where it divested 40 per cent stake in its bottling arm Hindustan Coca-Cola Holdings (HCCH), Quincey said it will "bring some new energy, dynamism, focus and proactivity to the execution in the marketplace".

"So we think we have got a strong plan from a marketing and innovation point of view. With some re-energised focus on this transition bottler, we are pretty confident on where we will go in India," he said.

India is the fifth largest market for The Coca-Cola Company.

Overall, Coca-Cola's "unit case volume declined 1 per cent, as growth in Central Asia, Argentina and China was more than offset by declines in Mexico, India and Thailand".

Unit case volume means the number of unit cases of beverages directly or indirectly sold by the company and its bottling partners to customers.

In the Asia Pacific market, in which India is included, "unit case volume declined 5 per cent, largely due to a decline in India and the impact of refranchising bottling operations".

The Atlanta-headquartered company reported an increase of 1 per cent in its net revenue to USD 12.5 billion. PTI KRH HVA