Soft Drinks

Introduction

Soft drink market size for FY00 was around 270 m.n cases (6480mn bottles). The market witnessed 5- 6% growth in the early‘90s. Presently the market growth has growth rate of 7- 8% per annum compared to 22% growth rate in the previous year. The market size for FY01 is expected to be 7000 mn bottles.

Soft Drink Production area

The market preference is highly regional based. While cola drinks have main markets in metro cities and northern states of UP, Punjab, Haryana etc. Orange flavored drinks are popular in southern states. Sodas too are sold largely in southern states besides sale through bars. Western markets have preference towards mango flavored drinks. Diet coke presently constitutes just 0.7% of the total carbonated beverage market.

Growth promotional activities

The government has adopted liberalized policies for the soft drink trade to give the industry a boast and promote the Indian brands internationally. Although the import and manufacture of international brands like Pepsi and Coke is enhanced in India the local brands are being stabilized by advertisements, good quality and low cost.

The soft drinks market till early 1990s was in hands of domestic players like campa, thumps up, Limca etc but with opening up of economy and coming of MNC players Pepsi and Coke the market has come totally under their control.

The distribution network of Coca cola had6.5 lakh outlets across the country in FY00, which the company is planning to increase to 8 lakhs by FY01. On the other hand Pepsi Co's distribution network had 6 lakh outlets across the country during FY00 which it is planning to increase to 7.5 Lakh by FY01.

Types

Soft drinks are available in glass bottles, aluminum cans and PET bottles for home consumption. Fountains also dispense them in disposable containers Non-alcoholic soft drink beverage market can be divided into fruit drinks and soft drinks. Soft drinks can be further divided into carbonated and non-carbonated drinks. Cola, lemon and oranges are carbonated drinks while mango drinks come under non carbonated category.

The market can also be segmented on the basis of types of products into cola products and non-cola products. Cola products account for nearly 61-62% of the total soft drinks market. The brands that fall in this category are Pepsi, Coca- Cola, Thumps Up, diet coke, Diet Pepsi etc. Non-cola segment which constitutes 36% can be divided into 4 categories based on the types of flavors available, namely: Orange, Cloudy Lime, Clear Lime and Mango.