Home-grown soft drinks haven’t lost their fizz, finds Akila Kannadasan.

“Love you,” says the wrinkled, dhoti-clad old man. He picks a bottle of cola from a crate, pops it open with an opener, that hangs by a nail on the whitewashed walls of his shop, and hands it to me. On the bottle’s neck are the words ‘Love-u’ in bright red. “This is Pandian’s cola. It’s very good,” he says and smiles encouragingly as I try it. In that dizzying summer afternoon in the village of Koodakovil near Madurai, Pandian Drinks’ cola turns out to be a lifesaver. The shop, that’s over 50 years old, has no place for multinational beverage brands — the villagers swear by its Pandian paneer soda and cola, Jeyaraj orange fizz and Vitto ginger soda.

It’s fair to say that rural India is the epicentre of our home-grown soft drinks. Walk into any tea shop or sherbet shop and you can see them — made in small quantities in the nearest town, some of them have been in existence much before Independence. These drinks are now making headway into urban areas with Kalimark’s Bovonto leading the pack.

Started in 1916 in Virudhunagar by businessman P.V.S.K. Palaniappan, Kalimark is now an almost 200-crore company. Their signature drink Bovonto was born in 1959. The deep-brown fizz tastes like cola with a tinge of grape. “Call it grape if you like,” laughs K.P.R. Sakthivel, a director at Kali Aerated Water Works Pvt. Ltd. “But it’s not cola.” Bovonto is a household name down South — ask for ‘colour’ in any grocery shop and you will either get Bovonto or the ochre-coloured Torino. Their factory was established in Chennai in 1960. “It was inaugurated by then chief minister K. Kamaraj,” recalls Sakthivel. But it’s in the past few months that their presence has been pronounced in the city — their fragrant paneer soda too has become quite popular. Kalimark plans to expand into Kerala, Karnataka, and Andhra Pradesh. But their journey was not easy. Hundreds of smaller soda companies have shut down owing to competition from big names.

“There were over 500 soda companies in Chennai at one time,” says S. Mayilvel of Vela and Co., seated in his factory in Royapettah. “Now there are only around 350.” Mayilvel, who inherited the company from his father, has studied a short course on beverages at the Central Food Technological Research Institute in Mysore. “We initially made goli sodas. But I introduced flavoured sodas since we faced difficulties in sourcing the bottles,” he says. Mayilvel makes cola, lemon, nannari lemon, orange, and apple sodas and sells them in glass bottles as well as in 300ml PET bottles. His specialty is nannari soda, for which he soaks the roots sourced from Parry’s for 24 days to extract its essence. “I supply to small shops in Egmore, Mylapore, Triplicane and near Central,” he says. Mayivel cannot even dream of investing in advertising his product, much like S.C. Selvaraj who runs Selvam Drinks in Ambattur. “My advertisers are my customers,” he says. “My products sell by word-of-mouth.” Over the years, Selvaraj has taken on competition and sales tactics of multinational players to little success. But life goes on for companies such as his. For, many of them live on a loyal customer base they’ve earned over several decades of their existence.

Asoka Drinks, started in Puducherry in 1950, is one such. C. Pandurangan, the proprietor, says that the multinational soft drink giants are not their competitors. “We have our regular customers who’ve been with us ever since the company was started,” he says. Products such as paneer soda are his USP. “We use locally-sourced raw material; this suits our body and is not bad for health,” he says.

Good old goli soda is crumbling by the day owing to the lack of bottles; but Trumba Beverages’ Rocket Soda hopes to revive it. Sold for up to Rs.150 a bottle, Rocket Soda is gaining popularity in the city. The Tamil Nadu State Palmgur and Fibre Marketing Co-operative Federation’s Palm Cola sold at Khadi Gramodyog Bhavan Outlets is sweetened with palm sugar. At Rs.10 for a 200 ml bottle, regulars at Khadi can be seen sipping the soda on hot afternoons at their Mount Road branch.

Hundreds of tiny soda factories with hand-operated machines are spread across the State, making a living out of mixing nothing but water, sugar syrup, carbon dioxide, and flavours. Distributed on hand-drawn carts, autos, and even cycles, they are somehow managing to survive. While most stick to tried and tested flavours, some keep trying out new flavours. Mayilvel, for instance, has a bag of gooseberries on his table. “I’m trying to make nellikkaai soda,” he grins.