How Coca-Cola’s low-cost solar cooler is helping Coke spread its wing in villages

KOLKATA: As the first rays of the winter sun hit the small solar It's just another Coke sold, except that the sale has been made panels perched on the roof of Roop Devi's kirana store in a remote village in Bareilly, Uttar Pradesh, a direct current compressor motor whirrs into life. It refrigerates a small, opaque, boxstyled cooler inside her shop. A few hours later Devi opens the box and makes her first sale — an ice-cold bottle of Coke.in a village that doesn't have any electricity. As the thirsty villager gulps down the fizzy chill gushing out of the bottle, Coca-Cola India moves another step closer to prying open the market in 80,000 Indian villages that do not have any electricity. Of these, 25,000 have little chance of being connected to the power grid in the conventional way