On the crucial issue of franchisees and bottlers, Cadbury Schweppes managing director Ashok Jain said that the bottlers' issue is complicated and that will take some time to get sorted out. Cadbury Schweppes has 16 bottlers in all in the country.

However, sources said that the Schweppes bottlers are reeling under heavy losses after having faced failure with brands like Sport Cola and the slow moving Crush and Canada Dry. The bottlers, sources said, would be more than willing to sell off to Coca Cola.

The bottlers may opt for being part of Coke's expanding COBO (company-owned bottling operation), a deal which will augur well, they added.

Coca Cola is already on a bottling-operation strengthning spree, with its recent deal with McCoy and a packaging deal with the Delhi-based Pure Drinks Ltd. The company is building a bottling unit in Noida which should be ready for operation in the next few months.

"The main benefit to Coca Cola through the international deal is neither market share gain nor visibility or brand gain, but it is the tremendous scope for penetration by acquiring the bottling units," said marketing consultant Jagdeep Kapoor.

In terms of sheer brand equity, Coca Cola has little to gain considering that the Schweppes brands have not fared well on the Indian turf. In addition to this, Coca Cola already has two major Cola brands --Coke and Thums Up--and a fairly well established non-cola orange brand in Fanta. The only value addition will come in the form of Canada Dry, which will also need some new strategies to wake the brand up to the Indian consumer, said Kapoor.

The cola and non-cola wars between arch global rivals Pepsi and Coca Cola in the 265 million case Rs 3,500 crore Indian softdrinks market is expected to become more muggy, notwithstanding that Cadbury Schweppes was too small to cause a great splash in the market.

Of the total market, the non-cola segment forms 42 per cent. Cadbury Schweppes brands in the non-cola segment hold a 4.5-5 per cent share of the non-cola market in India.

According to an IMRB survey of 41 cities, the Pepsi brand has a market share of 27.5 per cent in the total market. Brand Coke has a share of 12 per cent in terms of volumes and Thums Up is 17 per cent.

While there are differing market share figures, the over all market share of Pepsi according to the IMRB study is 47 per cent and that of Coca Cola is 48 per cent. Industry experts, however, peg the Coca Cola share at a higher level of 55 per cent.