Beverage manufacturer Coca-Cola India became the first company to venture into the idea of having a solar powered cooler, when its president and CEO Atul Singh visited a rural market in the state of Uttar Pradesh, in the year 2009. The shops there had served him warm Coke.
Today however, the situation is different, as a kirana store (daily goods store) in a remote village of Bareilly, UP has a solar powered cooler, which begins working as the first rays of the sun hit its panels. It refrigerates a small box-styled cooler inside the shop and a few hours later the shop owner opens the cooler with an ice cold bottle of Coke.
It might be just another bottle of Coke, but the sale has been made in a village which does not have any electricity. Coca-Cola India is thus making a move to install such coolers in about 80,000 villages across the country which do not have any electricity. Out of these, about 25,00o villages have a possibility to be connected to the power grid.
The soft-drink company now plans to distribute 1,000 free boxes to women entrepreneurs in the state of Madhya Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, UP and some parts of West Bengal by the year 2013.
