When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
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When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
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Re: When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
#2People 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.
Re: When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
#3Until 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. :-(
Re: When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
#4Limca and Thums Up are also available in Indian stores around the world.
Re: When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
#5Discussed last year: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19192335
Re: When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
#6People 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…
oh yeah, I bet all the indians were very happy being only able to buy off-brand cola at horrendous prices. Woooo weeee.
Re: When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
#7When 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.
Re: When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
#8People 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…
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).
Re: When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
#9Travelling 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!
Re: When India kicked out Coca-Cola, local sodas thrived (2019)
#10When 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…
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...