Coca-Cola india
“Technology is becoming a major enabler for our business in all aspects,” says Rawal. In 2016, as in the past few years, the beverage giant focused on leveraging technology to deliver on three pillars: Convenience, Discovery, and Efficiency within the organisation.
On the convenience front, their bottling partners, Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverages (HCCB), scaled up www.coke2home – their online delivery and ordering platform for beverages. Post its launch in 2013-14 in Ahmedabad, this venture was scaled up to six additional cities in the country – Mumbai, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad, Noida and Pune. HCCB has also used coke2home to launch new brands including Sprite Zero, Fuze Tea, VIO flavored milk and Georgia coffee. Coca-Cola has also leveraged marketplaces and e-commerce platforms to enable consumers to discover some of their niche and premium products. In order to drive efficiency, they have introduced a drive to ensure that most business matrices can be monitored in real time (coolers, stock availability, fill rates at modern trade outlets, installation of bottling lines etc). They have introduced Internet of Things (IoT) based sensors to track various parameters and ensure real time decision making.
Late in 2016, in the wake of the demonetisation programme, Coca-Cola also aggressively pushed for digital-based transactions. “While our payment to suppliers and a majority of our collections from our partners are digitised, we are now working with partners like State Bank of India to extend this facility to every retailer in the marketplace,” points out Rawal.
