“With the advent of Internet of things, we are advancing towards using IoT to understand our consumers better and help our bottlers make better decisions, [hence this app],” said a Coca-Cola India spokeswoman to FoodNavigator-Asia.
At present, the app services only apply to the purchase of bulk jars of Kinley mineral water online, although Coca-Cola India added that it is ‘constantly looking at leveraging the power of digital to recruit more consumers’.
“[This is part of] our journey to be a ‘Total beverages company’ and making our products available to consumers whenever they want and in whichever way they want.”
The service has been launched in Noida city, with plans to expand to the entire Delhi-NCR region in phases.
Coca-Cola India and South-West Asia Chief Information Officer Sanjay Rawal added to BusinessLine that: “[We] expect to expand our reach to a larger number of households and grow our bulk jar water business further.”
“This is also one of the ways we are looking at using the online subscription model to enhance consumer experience through the digital medium.”
There are also apparently no limits to the amounts that can be purchased via the app, as Coca-Cola India said: “All consumers [can use the app] to order Kinley bulk jars in any quantity.”
According to the Coca-Cola India website, Kinley water is purified over a 10-step process and ‘promises the assurance of clean and safe drinking water’.
Other tech initiatives by Coca-Cola India
In addition to the mobile app, the company has also launched 1,000 ‘connected coolers’ in various Indian regions.
These were fitted with ‘IoT devices’ that were designed to collect data on temperature, humidity, the number of times the coolers are closed and opened and assess the temperatures maintained and so on.
“[The aim of this pilot was to] help us in implementing our strategy to go hyperlocal and provide choices tailored to consumers’ location and behaviour,” added the Coca-Cola India spokeswoman.
Although the company declined to reveal more specific data, the general data and insights that resulted from the pilot included ‘various aspects such as the kind of cooling temperatures being maintained, consumer shopping behaviour and which products get traction in which regions’.
Coca-Cola India deems the project a success. “Now we are scaling up this pilot. We will be deploying about 5,000 connected coolers across the country,” it said.
Rawal added that the company is building a ‘data lake’ that comprises datasets from different parts of the organisation, which will undergo analysis ‘to formulate future strategies’.