The days of cold drinks are now coming to an end. Now the era of cold tea is entering into Indian market. In metro cities, more than 60%peoples preferred cold tea in place of cold drinks. So, why our cold drink majors are keep quite? That’s why major rivalries are entering in this segment. You are right thinking, I am talking about Coke India and PepsiCo. The both companies are entering into iced tea segment in India. But this time they are not alone, these companies are entering with joint ventures with other companies.
The world’s largest food company, Nestle shakes hands with the world’s largest beverage company Coca Cola with the name of Beverage Partners Worldwide (BPW). They launched their first ready to drink beverage, Nestea , in India. PepsiCo is not very far, they made a 50:50 joint venture with Tata Global Beverage in the arena of non-carbonated ready to drink health beverages with a mandate to do business globally. Add to this another joint venture for Lipton Iced tea, where PepsiCo has an alliance with unilever.
The auction begins against a backdrop where the health and wellness beverages category, which these three ventures target, is predicted to grow at 22 percent per year and reach Rs. 17350 crore by 2015, according to consulting company Tata Strategic Management Group. As BPW launched Nestea beginning with Mumbai, a market that it claims is the country’s largest for iced tea.
At the present time, one out of 10 customers visiting coffee chains ask for iced tea, the market is still niche and moving at a painfully slow pace, say rivals. According to experts, it is very tough category in India, because the Indian peoples are still looking for hot tea. But if you considers what the TSMG report says, “Yoghurt drinks, fruit juice, energy and sports drinks are likely to be the fastest growing beverage categories’, reaching eight time their aggregated current size by financial year 2015.”
The future is unpredictable, but one thing is very clear the we peoples will enjoy the different tastes of iced teas. On the behalf of THE WORLD OF FMCG, I Pravin Tripathi wishing COKE and PEPSICO a great luck.
