(Image source from: Coca-Cola President Visits India For Short Trip To Survey Market})

The Coca-Cola Company's President and Chief Operating Officer James Quincey is beginning his visit to India on Monday as a part of the survey to few key markets of Coke across the world. The short trip is a crucial one with a packed schedule for the 50 year old executive as he intends to understand the Indian market better.

Promoted to the current position in August 2015, Quincey in his new role will look after the Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Company’s worldwide operations. Previously, Quincey headed the company’s European region.

Quincey will depart on Tuesday and during the short trip, he is scheduled to interact with the Indian unit’s top management, bottlers and employees as well in an informal gathering, besides carrying out market visits in Delhi and Gurgaon.

As per the sources, the objective behind his visit is to understand the Indian market better, in which the world's largest beverage maker committed $5 billion (Rs 30,000 crore) three years back.

Speaking about the investment with Business Standard, Venkatesh Kini, Coca-Cola India and South West Asia, President, had said that the investment was a part of the strategy as a response to Indian market trends likely to get into the top-five club of markets by 2020. Currently, India is in the sixth position of markets for Coca-Cola across the globe.

Kini said. "The economic growth in the country and the creation of a wealthy, urban class of consumers has created demand for products that are truly international. An example of this is Coke Zero, which we launched in response to consumer demand for a zero-calorie drink. We were getting Facebook likes for Coke Zero out of India long before it was here."

As a response to consumer trend of premiumisation, another Coca-Cola's billion-dollar global brand combining tea and fruit flavors, Fuze Tea was also launched.

During this short Indian trip, Quincey would take stock of all this along with its drive to tap e-commerce section in India. One of such initiatives is Coke2home designed to enable customers to directly order and get the products delivered to home. It was launched as a pilot program by the bottling entity owned by the company, Hindustan Coca-Cola, in tie-ups with e-commerce websites.

-Sumana