From the CEO’s DeskDear Friends,2011 has been an eventful year for the company. We have grown our volumes, made effective technological innovations, developed long standing partnerships with a number of organizations and continued to build our portfolio of brands.India is a strategic market for The Coca-Cola Company. The Company announced a $ 2 Billion investment in India, in the next 5 years beginning 2012, which is directed at realizing the tremendous opportunity that exists in this market. The investment represents our commitment to continued innovation, consumer marketing and brand building, expansion of distribution and our manufacturing capacity and creates economic growth and opportunities for the local community.The India and South West Asia Business Unit is on track to achieve our 2020 goals, although there is a long way to go. Our India business has been growing for the last 23 quarters and 17 of these quarters have seen double digit growth. We are working to maintain this growth momentum and realize the potential in this market. India ranks among the top ten markets of The Coca-Cola Company in volume terms and is the largest market in the Eurasia and Africa Group.Last year, was a year of good results. Two of the Company’s core sparkling brands¹ – Thums Up and Sprite – were the country’s top selling soft drink brands. Trademark Coca-Cola was one of our fastest growing sparkling brands and Maaza² was India’s largest selling juice drink. Coca-Cola was recognized as India’s most trusted beverage brand³ as well as the most exciting youth brand in the country⁴. Coca-Cola India also ranked amongst the top five most respected FMCG companies in India⁵ . The Company launched Coke Studio, a fusion music show in partnership with MTV, which became a national phenomenon with 712,000 Facebook fans, over 2.5 million hits on YouTube and close to 10 million downloads on mobile platforms.Sustainability remained a key focus area for the Company and together with our bottling partners; we accomplished many of our goals, including achieving a net zero balance with regard to groundwater usage in India.We are well integrated with our local communities and are doing our bit to contribute to economic and social growth. We launched the ‘Coca-Cola NDTV Support My School’ campaign, which is aimed at creating more than 100 model schools in India. Each of the 100 schools will receive improved access to water and gender-specific sanitation, infrastructure for water conservation and rainwater harvesting, landscape improvement, library construction, teacher training, and new sports facilities. We also collaborated with Jain Irrigation to launch Project Unnati- an Ultra High Density Plantation technology for farmers in Andhra Pradesh, which will lead to better productivity in the Mango belt, train farmers on water conservation and sustainability. An example of innovating in India for Indian conditions was the launch of, eKOcool, a solar powered refrigerator, which overcomes the barrier of grid power availability and provides growth opportunities for many small business enterprises. The refrigerator is also equipped with a solar mobile charger and a lantern which provide additional income generation for the outlet.We actively supported grassroots level sports programs to encourage active, healthy living such as the Coca-Cola Under-16 Cup cricket tournament, the Coca-Cola Mir Iqbal Hussain Trophy football tournament and Sprite Gully Cricket. Collectively these programs are engaging more than 50,000 youth in healthy active living programs.As we work towards continuing our growth momentum in 2012, we remain committed to work with communities across the country for our mutual growth and development; and I look forward to your continued support in carrying the growth momentum forward.Best RegardsAtul Singh,President & CEO, Coca-Cola India & South West Asia¹Source – AC Nielsen
²Source – AC Nielsen
³Source – Brand Equity, Most Trusted Brands Survey 2011
⁴Source – Brand Equity, Most Exciting Youth Beverage Brands Survey 2011
⁵Source – Business World Most Respected Companies Survey 2011