Varun Beverages chief executive officer Vijay Kumar Bahl says the company underestimated demand in the local market when it began operations in 2018, having initially based its projections on India’s population of 1.4 billion people, a $3.94 trillion economy.
Bahl said considering India’s per capita beverage consumption of between eight and ten litres annually, he believed that one production line would be sufficient to serve the Zimbabwean market.
However, demand exceeded the company’s expectations, leading to expand its production capacity.
“Today, l’ve got 11 production lines and l’m putting two more production lines,” Bahl said.
Bahl said the company had increased its production capacity from 10 million bottles a month to 120 million bottles a month over the past eight years.
He described the company’s miscalculation as a “pleasant mistake”, explaining that demand had remained ahead of its ability to supply the market during the early years of the company’s operations.
“I think the mistake was a pleasant mistake, you know, and we had a long phase of honeymoon, I’ll say, where my demand was far ahead of my ability to supply,” he said.
Reflecting on the company’s growth, Bahl said the company had come to realise that Zimbabwe’s beverage market was bigger than it had initially expected.
“That’s the power of Zimbabwe. I think I underestimated it,” Bahl said.