We all travel through hard times at some point of time in our life and often we would like to have a helping hand to overcome such difficulties. Now, beverages major, Coca Cola is acting as a helping hand for people of rural India to make out their financial problems, through the program ‘Parivartan’.
The ‘Parivartan’ program basically targets retailers of semi-urban and rural markets. It is a training program conducted by the Coca-Cola University to develop skills like customer handling, book keeping, stock keeping and merchandising (among rural retailers). Unemployed women are also welcome to join the initiative by which Coke can achieve their vision to create five million women entrepreneurs globally by 2020. And also, it is quite nice to hear that, out of the 2.15 coke selling retail outlets, 7% are run by women.
‘Parivartan’ is one of the biggest initiatives undertaken by Coke as part of the rural market penetration program. Previous efforts like solar lanterns and solar coolers proved to be a great success. Solar lanterns will bring brightness in shops during evening and night time. Solar coolers which keeps products cool for more than 10 hours is really a blessing for rural retailers who have to deal with erratic power supply.
Coca-Cola University has offered training for more than a 100,000 Indian retailers till now. Initially the training program was organized in class rooms and buses. But now the company employs a mobile classroom in the form of a customized bus to reach out to more people in rural areas. Seating area, presentation zone, audio-video and on board trainers are the main amenities provided in the customized bus. Presentations in local languages (14 languages) with audio and video technology enable small retailers to better understand the techniques required to succeed in a dynamic retail scenario.
Though all these marketing strategies offer a win-win situation for both the retailers and the brand, empowerment of women community is one of the main agendas of the company. Economic stability of women community is made possible through easily accessible resources and capacity building.
