Indian homes grow warmer towards cold beverages

economictimes.indiatimes.com:

cold beverages including soft drinks, squashes, powdered mixes and packaged juices have witnessed a growth of 47% in May as against 38% in 2019, a survey showed. In-home penetration refers to the number of households in the survey that consumed the product. Average household consumption of soft drinks too has gone up to just over 7 litres annually from 6.5 litres in 2019, reports TOI. This 47% in-home penetration, according to marketing data and analytics company Kantar, which shared the household panel data exclusively with TOI, is significantly better than any 12-month period before the pandemic. «Whatever struggle the sector faced in the summers of 2020 and 2021 was wiped out by strong performance in 2022 and a reasonably good 2023. There have been important strides that the category made from a purchase standpoint, with increasing trips and quantity signifying a deepening habit,» said K Ramakrishnan, MD, south Asia, Worldpanel division at Kantar. Moreover, families are shopping more frequently for soft drinks. Households are buying bottled soft drinks 6.5 times (average) annually as against 5.5 times in 2019, showing that the habit is now well entrenched.

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Bottled soft drinks (45% penetration) form the bulk of the sector as they reach almost all cold beverage households. In comparison, juices have 5% penetration and squashes 6%. The cold beverage sector, which is heavily dependent on seasons, had a penetration of 29% in March-May of 2019, said Kantar. Yet, despite excessive rains, a penetration of 37% in March-May this year is close to the annual in-home figure in 2019. Nadia Chauhan, joint MD & CMO of Parle Agro, which makes Frooti,