‘India remains a promising market with long-term potential, said Coca-Cola Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Executive Vice President Henrik Gnani Braun at the Barclays Global Consumer Staples Conference. He highlighted the company’s steady progress in India and its strategic role in the region.
Business Standard quoted Coca-Cola Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Executive Vice President Henrik Gnani Braun saying, “When you look at it (India) from a year-on-year basis, it continues to grow for us, the industry, and other industries. But it’s a market, if you look at that with the angle of segmentation across the countries that I was talking about, it’s still very small in terms of the industry size and consumption, one of the lowest actually.” With a population of over 1.4 billion, Braun believes that the country’s consumer base will grow further in the future. “The base will continue to expand and the frequency of drinks over time will be there,” he said, calling India “a long-term game.”
On the competition in the Indian market, Braun clarified that the presence of new players is natural and beneficial for the growth of the industry. Business Standard quoted Braun saying, “What we are seeing as well is very inherent of every market that’s growing or a category that starts to grow. A lot of new entrants want to play, and that’s a good thing to grow the industry. It’s not a good thing if you digress from a strategy and pivot on tactical moves because of a player that maybe is not playing a game to be here for the long, long-term.”
He also said that Coca-Cola knows how to face short-term competitive challenges without losing focus on its future goals. “The company knows how to react to short-term attacks by different competitors without taking away the eye from the ball in the future.”
Reiterating the company’s long-term strategy in India, Braun said, “Our game in there (India), it’s (a) competition, it’s welcome to grow the industry. We will not step out of our strategy to build the right foundations with the flywheel that I talked about, invest capacity ahead of the curve because that’s what we have done in other markets, and it has been paying off here for years.”
Referring to the handing over of its stake in Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages to Jubilant Bhartia Group, Braun said, “In every single bottler that we have, there is an element of multi-generational belief in the business and that’s the best place to put your resources and to actually pass it on to the next generation, whether they’re going to be sitting on the boards or they’re going to be on the sidelines, just steering, but making sure that the business continues to thrive.”
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