Coca-Cola pulls plug on Sunfill

Coca-Cola India has decided to pull out its soft drink concentrate, Sunfill, launched in November 2002.

"We have shelved it. The business model did not work out. At least, I have not seen any work done on it," Coca Cola India's vice-president, marketing, Vikas Gupta, who joined about three and half months ago, told Business Standard.

Along with Vanilla Coke, Sunfill would count among the company's recent innovations that did not take off.

Coca-Cola initially roped in large distributors of Hindustan Lever, ITC, Britannia and Marico to promote Sunfill across the country.

The company made it available across grocery shops, paan shops and departmental stores to carve out a wider presence in the household segment.

Sunfill was available in three variants- regular, Anand and Tarang. Sunfill Regular was priced at Rs 2.50 per serve and was available in single serve (23gms) and multi serve (200gms).

Sunfill Anand was launched in the C, D, E and rural markets. Sunfill Tarang was targeted at housewives in the high-end grocery segment keeping in mind the age-old Indian custom of making squashes at home. It was a non-sugared concentrate.

The soft drink concentrate market in India, which includes powder and liquid concentrates and squashes, is valued at Rs 250 crore (Rs 2.5 billion). Powder concentrates constitute about 60 per cent of this market in terms of value and 85 per cent in terms of volume.

The size of the powdered drink segment, which is estimated to be Rs 85-90 crore (Rs 850-900 million) per annum, has grown at about 4 per cent in 2002-03. It is expected to grow significantly to increase its share of the 11 billion litres of the in-home cold beverage market that now stands at 0.2 per cent.

The powdered soft drink category is divided into sweetened and un-sweetened segments. While the un-sweetened segment dominated the market until now, the recent introduction of low-priced sweetened products is expected to induce a shift from un-sweetened to sweetened category.

Ajit Sahgal, director, KJS India, a 100 per cent subsidiary of Philip Morris India, said, "We expect a growth rate of 30 per cent per year over five years in the sweetened segment. The un-sweetened segment is expected to decline as the Indian consumer will look for value and convenience."