India’s non-alcoholic ready-to-drink (NARTD) is navigating supply chain snags and intense competition from domestic behemoths and quick-to-launch direct-to-consumer (D2C) startups, all of which makes holding on to consumer loyalty incredibly difficult. In this interview, Abhishek Gupta, VP, customer development, Coca-Cola India & Southwest Asia, tells Alokananda Chakraborty that category recovery in a growing market is rarely linear, and that a marketers job is to have the right portfolio ready when that demand inflects. Edited excerpts:
The NARTD segment saw a dip in early 2026. What pivots have you made to revitalise categories like juices and energy drinks?
The early 2026 softness in the NARTD segment reflects a confluence of factors — weather conditions in key consumption quarters, some moderation in consumer spending, and a category that outside sparkling and packaged water, is still building critical mass in India. We do not read this as a structural reversal. The direction of consumption, toward more diverse, occasion-specific, and better-for-you formats, remains intact.
Our portfolio response is devised to go beyond the structural construct of the market. Powerade entered a functional hydration space with real structural tailwinds — rising sports participation, active lifestyle adoption, and a gaming culture that has created a new hydration occasion that was previously underserved. Coca-Cola Zero Sugar grew 14% globally in 2025 and is being extended across formats in India, responding to a clear and accelerating consumer shift toward low-calorie options across demographic groups.
Maaza, in its 50th year, continues to grow on the strength of its heritage positioning and remains a genuinely loved homegrown mango drink. RimZim Jeera and Rose Sharbat bring trusted Indian flavours into the ready to drink format, expanding the flavoured drink occasion for consumers and creating accessible new trials.
The broader pattern echoes what other industry leaders in India have noted consistently: category recovery in a structurally growing market is rarely linear, and short-term volume softness often masks the underlying shift in what consumers want. Our job is to have the right portfolio ready when that demand inflects.
How is Coca-Cola tailoring its strategy to evolving consumption occasions?
The occasion drives the purchase decision and that is the organising principle behind both our portfolio and our channel strategy. A family meal, a gym session, a late-night screen session each creates a distinct beverage need. Our portfolio is also structured around building brands for diverse consumption occasions. For instance, Coke Zero, Diet Coke, Thums Up XForce, and Sprite Zero for low-calorie preference; Powerade for active hydration; RimZim Jeera and Rose Sharbat for ready-to-drink local flavours. The goal is not to push this full portfolio through every channel, it is to ensure the right brand is available and prominent where the occasion calls for it.
How does that tell on your channel strategy?
Revenue growth management is how we translate occasion-led demand into channel execution, building the right brand-pack-price architecture for each environment. A premium modern trade outlet requires a very different mix from a rural kirana, and the opportunity lies in tailoring availability, pricing and pack formats to each consumption occasion and channel. We see our portfolio of Schweppes mixers, diets and lites and cans prominently in the digital commerce channel – and this has enabled innovations and scaled launches which best cater to the needs of the consumer cohort served by the channels. These also enable accelerated growth for our customer partners.
What enables this at scale is data. Coke Buddy provides customer development teams with real-time sell-out visibility across the retail network, enabling faster, insight-led decisions on trade planning, resource allocation and market execution.
Can we talk a little more about Coke Buddy? How is agentic AI within Coke Buddy improving stock management and revenue growth for retail partners?
From a customer development perspective, Coke Buddy is helping create a more connected, data-driven retail ecosystem. Built on the premise that kirana owners are entrepreneurs, not just distribution endpoints, the platform uses AI to provide retailers with smarter ordering recommendations based on purchase history, seasonal demand patterns and local market signals.
These insights not only help retailers improve stock availability and reduce over-ordering but also enable customer development teams to better understand demand trends, prioritise market interventions and improve sales execution. With real-time ordering data flowing in from over one million retail touchpoints, teams are able to make faster and more predictive decisions across distributor allocation, outlet engagement and market planning.
Beyond ordering, Coke Buddy also provides retailers access to schemes, promotions and category insights through a single platform. As the platform evolves, agentic AI capabilities will further help reduce friction between insight and action by enabling routine decisions and actions to be executed more seamlessly at scale.