Competition helps us stay in top form: Coca-Cola COO & EVP Henrique Braun

India is Coca-Cola's fifth-largest market by volume, with resilient demand, quick commerce expansion and digitisation helping drive growth, says Henrique Braun

The Coca-Cola Company India continues to see resilient demand in India, company’s chief operating officer and executive vice president (COO & EVP) Henrique Braun said at a round table in Mumbai on Thursday.

 

“It is never a straight line, but if you compare year-on-year, the bigger the time frame, the better you are going to understand what is going on—and demand continues to be resilient,” Braun said.

 

India is Coca-Cola’s fifth-largest market by volume.

 

Braun added that while there may be fluctuations, India remains a market with strong demand and continued industry development. “There are different bases, but the demand creation opportunity is still there,” he said.

 

Speaking about emerging channels driving demand, Braun pointed to quick commerce as a uniquely Indian growth lever. “Another channel that is developing here is quick commerce. It accelerates every time I visit,” he said.

 

Discussing urban demand, Braun noted, “Think about urban [demand] as not only sales you get from the normal channel—you need to add the whole ecosystem. That math is not easily done because some market measurements don’t capture everything.”

 

He highlighted that India, as a developing country, offers continued growth opportunities for the beverage industry.

 

On seasonal demand for Coca-Cola’s portfolio, Braun said the company is working towards an all-weather strategy to reduce reliance on summer sales. “Over time, you want to have a strategy that lowers the seasonality impact. That has been done in different parts of the world,” he said. 

 

When asked about the company’s next brand crossing the billion-dollar mark in India, Braun said it is expected, given the vibrancy of the country, the industry, and Coca-Cola’s system in India. While he did not specify a timeline, he said the company is developing its brands sustainably.

 

Coca-Cola India currently has three brands that have crossed the billion-dollar mark: Thums Up, Maaza, and Sprite.

 

On digitisation, Braun spoke about the success of Coke Buddy, the company’s digital ordering platform. “Its base keeps increasing as it helps us talk to our customers directly and makes us more effective,” he said.

 

Coke Buddy enables retailers to order Coca-Cola products in bulk, offering personalised order suggestions, one-click ordering, tracking, and instant notifications. It has rapidly scaled to improve convenience and adoption.

 

Coca-Cola India is present in over five million retail outlets across the country, and over one million of these have adopted Coke Buddy.

 

“What we are seeing as a great opportunity is leveraging this data to get even better insights for new launches or for iterations of campaigns moving forward. This is something being done here that we are also leveraging in other parts of the world,” Braun said.

 

On the Indian market, Braun noted that the beverage industry is still developing.

 

Regarding bottling, he said the company is pleased with its current position. “We went through years of defining the partners that would align with us on a vision to grow the business in India together. We’re very happy with all the partners we have today. They understand their part of India very well, and that helps us,” he said.

 

“India is such a big country, and having different bottlers across the nation helps us actually leverage that. With the outline we have today, we believe we have a very strong system to continue growing,” he added.

 

Coca-Cola has 11 bottlers in India, with the top four accounting for over 80 per cent of the market. 

While talking about competition increasing in the space, Braun said that in a developing and vibrant industry like ours, there will always be players entering the market.  

He also said, “The barriers to enter are not that big, but the barriers to stay and to scale are very high.” He added that competition is welcome because it helps the company to stay on top of its game and continue to think on ways to connect with the consumer and the customer.