Beverage major The Coca-Cola Company flagged a volume decline of 1% in Asia-Pacific including India due to inclement weather conditions in the September quarter on Tuesday. The comments were made in the post-earnings investor call, where EVP and Chief Operating Officer, Henrique Braun, said that softer consumer spending as well as weaker industry performance besides rains impacted each of its operating units in the APAC region.
The company declared its financial numbers for Q3 of CY2025 on Tuesday, providing a perspective on India, its fifth-largest market by volume, during the earnings call.
Braun said that despite the challenges, the company gained value share and grew revenue and profit for the segment during the period. “We are focusing on granular channel execution plans, tailoring our brand price pack architecture with a focus on affordability and investing for growth. Putting it all together, we continue to execute in an uncertain external environment with strong plans in place and a focus on driving profitable growth,” Braun said.
Coca-Cola is the second company after rival PepsiCo flagged similar concerns earlier this month, saying it saw a decline in beverage volumes due to unseasonal rains in the country. But its foods business logged a 2.5% organic revenue growth in the third quarter of 2025, driven by markets such as India. Both Coca-Cola and PepsiCo follows a January-December accounting year.
This is the second consecutive quarter where rains have hurt beverage makers in India. While the June quarter was marred by unseasonal rains, the September quarter saw an extended period of rainfall across the country, hurting consumption.
In India, the pressure is added because Reliance Consumer has launched affordable beverage products across carbonated to non-carbonated, forcing players such as PepsiCo and Coca-Cola to tweak pricing and increase volumes to counter the impact.
Coca-Cola’s chairman & CEO James Quincey pointed to this shift towards “localness” across markets, which has compelled incumbent players (such as Coke) to “double down” on their key geographies including India. “We are certainly seeing that there’s more dynamism in regional competitors and some of the local competition,” Quincey told investors.
“Clearly, we got a bit better in September, some sequential improvement. I think it would be fair to say, as much as anything, that there was a doubling down by the (Coca-Cola) system, increases in marketing and focus and innovation from us working with the bottlers on some affordability and revenue management options and some step-ups in execution,” he said.
The focus, he said, would be to continue “drilling down” into what was needed to be done and to drive growth in the coming quarters. This, experts said, would include making price and volume adjustments as competitive intensity grows in India.