[HN Gopher] When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived...
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When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
Author : ycombonator
Score : 110 points
Date : 2020-07-05 18:48 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.atlasobscura.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.atlasobscura.com)
| tadasZ wrote:
| In my opinion Vita-Cola, Polo-Cockta, Kofola faded not because of
| coca cola, but because they were controlled by soviet mentality
| people from "higher status", party people and so on, who didn't
| care about anything but themselves, a lot of companies
| disappeared after soviet union collapsed (thank god it did
| collapse) because of crime, corruption and complete incompetence.
| jlg23 wrote:
| Vita-Cola is again alive and kicking, and I am one who actually
| loves it. I am sure this is not just nostalgia, because, even
| though I was born in the GDR, I was 9 when the wall fell and
| maybe had 3 glasses of Vita Cola before.
|
| "crime, corruption and complete incompetence" are often cited
| as the reasons for why local brands disappeared, along with
| "nostalgia" for their revival. I personally believe people just
| wanted to have the stuff they could not get before - or
| "curiosity" to put it in one word. Once that was over, people
| went by taste again and yes, there are actually customers who
| just like a higher acidity, less sugar or simply a different
| taste.
| RealityVoid wrote:
| I think curiosity doesn't really cover it. Being a kid in the
| 90's, home-grown soda sucked. In Romania, we had knock-offs
| such a Adria Cola witch were, quite honestly, horrible.
| intended wrote:
| Interesting note on thumbs up - it still exists - Coke's attempt
| to phase it out resulted in consumer backlash, since there is
| still a large demand for it.
|
| So they did the logical business thing and sold both.
|
| (Although thums up may be smaller than it used and could just be
| dying a slower death.)
| sandworm101 wrote:
| Longtime traveler here. I was in india in the early nineties to
| witness thumbs up. Coke is a big bad corporation and that makes
| them evil, but when I traveled I always drink coke. Coke has
| always been obsessed with keeping its flavor consistent across
| markets. To get there they have to start with consistent water.
| That means their water is filtered and treated properly before it
| is turned into coke. So, when I am traveling, if I ever have a
| choice between coke and a local product I will go with coke. It
| is not the most enlightened decision but, having had a couple
| water-borne diseases in my day, coke is the safe bet.
|
| (Conversely, New England has a variety of local "sodas". I do not
| hesitate to try those when I am in that area. New England is not
| India.)
| markdown wrote:
| Maaza ftw!
| satya71 wrote:
| There are basically two ways a company can gain market share:
| make better product or spend a lot capital. Opening up the
| economy allows both kinds of competition, and local companies in
| a developing cannot do the second.
|
| Cold drinks are a sector where capital is the only way to gain
| market share. No wonder Coca Cola could outspend its local rivals
| and capture market share.
|
| Sectors where innovation and understanding of local market
| matters, local competitors can emerge and do better. Vehicles are
| one such market where developed country behemoths have had
| limited success. Dinosaurs like Hindustan Motors couldn't
| compete, but Maruti Suzuki (now Suzuki) and Hyundai maintain
| comfortable leads in market share.
| Mekantis wrote:
| People like to pretend that protectionism is such a bad thing.
| But Western nations built themselves through protectionism, it's
| something China has been doing to great success and the Asian
| tiger economies (primarily South Korea) did as well. After all,
| there's only so much you can do for your population if you never
| ensure a steady supply of high quality jobs that provide a path
| into the middle class, and you don't protect fledgling industries
| (beyond basic commodities) that are necessary to create these
| jobs but can't compete properly against well-established
| companies elsewhere. It's one of the great neoliberal myths that
| they've so successfully perpetuated (primarily through
| institutions like the IMF and the World Bank) that free trade and
| vicious, expansive privatization is the only right path.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| Latin america and even india are proofs that "pure"
| protectionism does not work. Even China is an example of free
| trade working. China opened up _massively_ , reduced customs,
| reduced costs of doing business etc for 3 decades before moving
| towards more restrictive and more protectionist policies. After
| learning as much as possible from foreign corporations that
| flocked to China. Even now, free trade would be much more
| beneficial to china economically if it wasn't for the current
| geopolitical situation. Of course it was very far from a
| totally deregulated free market, but the Chinese government
| _craved_ foreign investment for most of the 1990s-2000s and did
| everything to attract it. India on the other hand has a very
| bad reputation when it comes to international investment
| _because_ of it 's famously poor economic (and
| protectionist/populist) policies that made investment very
| risky.
|
| It's very hard for a country like India or Argentina to
| actually innovate when they restrict themselves to a local pool
| of knowledge, talent, and experience. And that's precisely why
| India has lagged far, far behind China even if they were ahead
| in the 1970s-80s. You don't want to reinvent everything all the
| time, it just isn't possible without lagging far behind and
| that's what happens with protectionism.You will almost always
| end up with a low skilled economy with basic economic output
| (like beverages or commodities).
|
| It's easy to totally replace coca cola with local alternatives,
| it's impossible to do for sectors like semiconductors or
| finance when you have to start from almost 0 because no one
| wants to invest in a protectionist economy.
| intended wrote:
| I think you've made an argument for free trade, but your
| examples and logic don't refute the value of protectionism.
|
| China is a ridiculously protectionist state - people in the
| west had theorized that the market would force China to more
| opennness and democracy back in the day.
|
| China instead found a way to run a market with Chinese
| characteristics - a dual contract system where the English
| contract holds little power, knowledge transfer, a closed
| media environment and more.
|
| It's worked too. China suggests that some players can extract
| the benefits of free trade and protectionist policy.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| Easy to prove the point: Stop importing semiconductors and
| see how India or Argentina would fare.
| adi2907 wrote:
| China never allowed unfettered access to global firms. Since
| Deng Xiaoping opened up, the rule for a foreign firm to gain
| access was 1) to tie up with a local company which will have
| significant stake and 2) ensure technology transfer to the
| local company over a period. This was a pre condition for
| market access, and basically how electronics components
| makers were built. The recent stars like Huawei, Xiaomi and
| Lenovo could only be built once the supply ecosystem was
| local. You will not find a single example of any country
| becoming developed following free trade except for island
| nations like Singapore
| markdown wrote:
| > You will not find a single example of any country
| becoming developed following free trade except for island
| nations like Singapore
|
| So you will.
| mardifoufs wrote:
| As I said, China is now able to afford protectionism
| _because_ of a much more foreign investment minded policy
| than India. It 's weird to only focus on protectionism
| being a _positive_ when almost all of the more
| protectionist countries are way behind economically. China
| has been the most successful when it has had the least
| closed economy and it didn 't start producing Lenovo
| laptops because of protectionism. If that was the case, why
| don't we have Indian or Argentinian laptops by now?
|
| Arguing that protectionism is good because you are
| producing beverages when the downside is literal decades
| lost to anemic growth and poverty is just missing the
| forest for the tree. India was at a similar but better
| place than China was, but China embraced foreign
| investment, liberalization, low friction to trade. And
| india got totally leapfrogged. Things are changing now, but
| for a while China was definitely much safer to invest in
| than India since the whole country was hellbent on _not_
| interfering with foreign investing. You were (and still
| are) much more likely to get your investment made worthless
| by aggressive "local at all costs" policies in India than
| in China. Look at what happened to Walmart recently. India
| wants desperately to skip the "industrialization" and
| foreign ownership phase and go directly to where china is
| now, but that's ignoring 30 years of smart policy in China.
|
| Keep in mind, free trade and free international markets
| still allow for a very regulated economy and socialist
| policies. So protectionism, by reducing prosperity and
| investment actually cripples social programs. Scandinavia
| is known to be "social democrat" but still has a very open
| economy. Prosperity has been mostly induced by free
| movement of goods. Of course, China does not want to keep
| being a manufacturing only economy, and is moving towards a
| service oriented one. But that's what _always_ happens
| jariel wrote:
| " You will not find a single example of any country
| becoming developed following free trade except for island
| nations like Singapore"
|
| Canada, Australia, New Zealand and in reality, the US as
| well.
|
| The US has always been pretty open.
|
| But yes, if a nation is in shambles, it may very well make
| sense to make major strategic investments for the national
| good, but ultimately, it can't last.
|
| Korea, Japan etc. would be much poorer today if they had
| continued to manage their economies in a post-war fashion.
| rodgerd wrote:
| New Zealand has fallen further and further behind its
| nearest neighbor over the time it's taken a hard-line
| free-trade position.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| The US being open is mostly the postwar period. Tariffs
| were huge pre-WWII, in fact the Great Depression was
| probably exacerbated by rounds of tariff retaliation: htt
| ps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tariff_in_United_States_histor
| ...
| hristov wrote:
| Latin America is an example how the "free market" theory as
| espoused by the washington consensus is very bad for
| developing nations. Latin America is the region that most
| closely follows the washington consensus and they have
| suffered for this mightily for this over the post ww2 years.
|
| There were little spurts of protectionism in argentina and
| brasil but those happened only around the 2000s and only as a
| reaction after many years of gutting the countries under free
| market policies.
|
| Holding China as an example of free trade success is a little
| wrong, to say the least. Post ww2 China has always had a very
| carefully crafted protectionist policies, and while they did
| open up majorly, they are still very protectionist by almost
| any sane international standard. Lets not forget that even
| now to start any significant business in China you need to
| make sure that Chinese nationals own a majority of your
| business.
|
| India liberalized much more than China during the 80s and
| 90s, so if you want to make that comparison, India should be
| on the free trade side. In my opinion though the Chinese
| economic success in comparison to India had much more to do
| with domestic social policies. China simply did the best to
| ensure that despite wide spread poverty most people have
| access to education, clean water, modern medical services,
| modern telecom and transportation infrastructure, etc. India,
| on the other hand, as part of their "modernization" gutted
| social programs (again, listening to the Washington
| consensus) and they still have a vast part of their
| population in a more or less pre-industrial state of
| education and development.
| vl wrote:
| Free trade advances human race as a whole and raises average
| standard of living. But it's important to understand what is at
| the end of this advance: irrelevance of labor.
|
| Not only hyper-optimization produces fragile systems (i.e. look
| at the mask and sanitizer shortages at the most wealthy nation
| on Earth), it also eventually will make most of the labor
| uncompetitive.
|
| You can only consume so much on credit, I'm not sure how world
| will reshape when most of the humans cannot contribute anything
| of value.
| reaperducer wrote:
| The problem is that so many people have an all-or-nothing
| mindset. It's part of the tribalism that's running rampant
| through society as a whole, and is very destructive.
|
| Free markets are great. So are some closed markets. There has
| to be a balance.
| magicMonkeyPaw wrote:
| oh yeah, I bet all the indians were very happy being only able
| to buy off-brand cola at horrendous prices. Woooo weeee.
| WalterBright wrote:
| When one company tries to punish another, it imposes embargoes
| and sanctions. I.e. protectionism.
|
| The "embargoes bad", "protectionism good" doesn't make a whole
| lot of sense.
| bobthechef wrote:
| Friedrich List[0] made exactly this point. The United States,
| for example, is often portrayed as the paradigmatic example of
| the unregulated free market, but it is actually quite
| protectionist (some of the measures lead to perverse economic
| incentives like those surrounding the corn industry) and its
| economic power rose precisely because it exercised
| protectionist measures against the emerging industrial powers
| of Europe like Britain and France who would have been able to
| crush nascent American competition. List believed that free
| markets make sense within a domestic economy, but that import
| tariffs may be legitimately imposed when it results in domestic
| benefits.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_List
| nabla9 wrote:
| Joe Studwell's book "How Asia Works" explains how to do
| protectionism well (as how Asian tigers and others did it)
|
| 1. Land reform so that people can generate money from farming
| and generate financial surplus.
|
| 2. Controlled domestic finance sector protected from external
| competition..
|
| 3. Export oriented manufacturing where products are exposed to
| global competition but financing comes from domestic sources.
| This kind of partial protection allows capital accumulation
| even when products are inferior at first.
|
| Asian countries that failed in the first step never became
| tigers or are still trying. Incidentally China had partial land
| reform that started from bottom up (illegally) but was later
| accepted.
| systemvoltage wrote:
| This is wrong, misguided and naive.
|
| International trade when done with effective reciprocity and
| managing the trade deficit, can lead to competition on a larger
| scale, better outcome for consumers and specialization in
| particular aspect of manufacturing or services.
|
| Even domestically, specialization is how human species became
| to me. If humans continued to be inwards looking and never
| engaged in barter-trade or any kind of bilateral exchange
| either with monetary instrument or goods/services; we would
| still be caves.
|
| National to international trade is just one more step in the
| expansion of trade that we all benefit from. We have proof that
| it works when all parties are rational and cooperative. If we
| found aliens on another planet, it would _only_ make sense to
| trade with them (just increasing the abstraction layer from
| national to international to interplanetary).
| rbecker wrote:
| > International trade when done with effective reciprocity
| and managing the trade deficit
|
| This is exactly what protectionism can help achieve. Without
| it, you get banana republics, wholly owned by foreign
| multinationals.
|
| It's telling you ignore the parent posts Asian tiger
| economies as examples of successful protectionism, and
| instead address the ridiculous strawman of "never engaged in
| barter-trade or any kind of bilateral exchange either with
| monetary instrument or goods/services"
| [deleted]
| ardit33 wrote:
| If that is true, then Argentina (and many other Latin countries
| that adopted protectionism policies) would be flourishing.
| Argentina should be as rich as Canada, but they are 1/5th of
| their level.
|
| Protectionism might workout/help out for a limited time to jump
| start nascent local industries, but in the long term is
| damaging to an economy.
| mistermann wrote:
| Or, perhaps there is more than one single variable involved
| in economic development.
| thrwo334324 wrote:
| This is not surprising though, is it ?
|
| Britain's "benign civilizing" (schools in anglo-saxon nations
| have no shame) policies vis-a-vis India were severely skewed
| against India, and towards protecting her own fledgling
| industries.
|
| Mercantilism, 'a.k.a' Free Trade, was then exactly what China
| does now - freedom to sell my goods in your place. Opium wars
| too was all about 'Free Trade'.
| cvs268 wrote:
| Until they allowed Coke back in and it promptly bought-out the
| various local brands!
|
| Every bottled drink brand is now either owned by the Coca-Cola
| Company, or by PepsiCo Inc. :-(
| Proven wrote:
| What a stupid title.
|
| When State screwed the customers and removed the choice to buy
| Coke, they bought other stuff. Some investigative journalism!
|
| What does that tell me about whether customers were better off?
| Nothing. Maybe they had to pay more for the same or the same
| price for inferior substitutes.
| virtuabhi wrote:
| Limca and Thums Up are also available in Indian stores around the
| world.
| cvs268 wrote:
| Both are owned by the Coca Cola company now.
| dang wrote:
| Discussed last year:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19192335
| ncrmro wrote:
| When I went to PyCon India 2017 i travled a bit and it was cool
| to see the regular name brand soda used sugar.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| When Austin kicked out Lyft and Uber, local ride sharing thrived.
| However, the problem was they paled in comparison.
| amelius wrote:
| I'm sure that customers still reached their destination just
| fine like before ride-sharing was a thing, perhaps with only
| some minor inconveniences.
| icebraining wrote:
| Or, just like before ride-sharing was a thing, they wouldn't
| go at all. Lots of teenagers / young adults I knew who lived
| in areas with poor public transport got a massive upgrade to
| their social and cultural lives when ride-sharing appeared.
| For example, they could now join a band, since they could get
| home afterwards.
|
| Some elderly people I know also started going to the doctor
| more often, because walking to and from the bus stops was
| difficult, and the taxi was quite expensive for their low
| pensions.
| newyankee wrote:
| When India liberalized in 1991 and welcomed foreign investment
| again rick Coke simply bought out a lot of local competitors.
| Even today my favorite local soda 'thums up' is marketed as a
| separate drink by Coke in India.
|
| A water scarce country like India should really not promote high
| consumption of soda and sugar based drinks. However the same
| cannot be said about other industries.
|
| Pre liberalization India used to be a country of license permit
| raj. Handful of local companies were highly inefficient and did
| not produce quality products or have incentive to improve and
| innovate. Liberalization did introduce competition and a lot of
| international products like Honda motorcycles and scooters.
| Indian 2 wheeler manufacturers like Bajaj had to innovate to
| compete and did become succesful.
|
| However a lot of sectors today are facing the problem from cheap
| Chinese products. Even though we are a much poorer country a lot
| of local products could not compete with Chinese imports. A
| classic example is furniture. Wood was always expensive here and
| it was crafted into something useful by local carpenters and
| artisans for what i would consider were reasonable prices.
| However a lot of urban furniture is now imported from China.
| saagarjha wrote:
| > A water scarce country like India should really not promote
| high consumption of soda and sugar based drinks.
|
| I mean, I can see not promoting sugary drinks in general...but
| what does this have to do with water scarcity?
| nkurz wrote:
| I'm dubious about the numbers as well, but this article tries
| to do a full calculation of water usage for a .5L bottle of
| Coca Cola produced in the Netherlands:
| https://www.waterfootprint.org/media/downloads/CocaCola-
| TNC-...
|
| It concludes that each .5L bottle requires 35L of water as
| input. The majority of this is from the water required to
| grow sugar beets, which comes primarily from natural
| rainfall. Obviously, India is not the Netherlands, but I'd
| guess the same principle applies: growing the sweetener takes
| a lot of water, and theoretically there could be better uses
| for this water.
| slim wrote:
| coke gets delivered around the world in barrels
| concentrated. only water is added in factories.
| johannes1234321 wrote:
| This is a nice legend about the secret recipe. However
| production differs oflver the world. I.e. I'm the US the
| sweetener is high fructose corn syrup, while Europe uses
| Sycrose.
| bb611 wrote:
| And in Mexico uses cane sugar.
| [deleted]
| telesilla wrote:
| It takes a lot more than the volume of water to make the same
| volume in soda, beer and other commercial beverages. Consider
| bottle sterilization, crop irrigation..
|
| Example: https://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/22/business/energy-
| environme...
| rammy1234 wrote:
| Indian companies are slowly avoiding chinese products, for
| example all the chinese apps are now not allowed.
|
| https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/apps/news/checkout-the-n...
|
| Also today's news, Hero Cycles of India is shelving its plans
| to do business with China in light of recent changes.
|
| https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/chandigarh/plans-bu...
| madmax108 wrote:
| Travelling the world, one of the things that always strikes me is
| how omnipresent Coke and Pepsi are. But at the same time, every
| part of the world has it's own local twist on sugary sodas. The
| duopoly is so nice: You want something familiar, you always have
| it. You want something that cements a place in your mind, you
| have that too manufactured by the same conglomerates!
|
| A sip of Thums up takes me back to my college days (in India),
| just like Fresca teleports me to Costa Rica, The orangey
| goodnesss of Kas takes me to the coast of Malaga in Spain, and I
| can't even think of Mexico without tasting the many flavours of
| Jarritos available there!
| twic wrote:
| I need to go back to Malta to drink some Kinnie!
| BMorearty wrote:
| Haha, I never expected to see Kinnie on HN.
|
| My wife's parents are American immigrants from Malta. I tried
| Kinnie when we visited Malta. Not personally a fan. I think
| it's an acquired taste.
| intended wrote:
| I was there during the liberalization. What a time to have
| witnessed. I remember the headline when coke bought Parle, for
| what was then an eye watering number.
|
| And then several years later, TATA motors bought JLR. Of the two
| purchases, Coke definitely seems to have gotten the better of it.
|
| It's quite impressive what was managed in 1991, and the deep
| impact it's left on the country.
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