Making a change

She is uneducated. She is poor. She is a mother. And she lives in rural India. That usually signaled the end of a woman’s own life in India but Coca Cola wants to change that perspective. Coca Cola, a leading American beverage company has lately been taking up a lot of social causes in India, especially rural India for empowering the lives of people there.

In 2009, Coca Cola launched an initiative ‘University on Wheels’, a retail training program for changing lives in two and three tiered cities of India. Also, called Parivartan, meaning positive change, Coca Cola has a vision to encourage more women entrepreneurs in India and aims to support five million entrepreneurs globally by 2020. The fizzy beverage company is helping rural women stand on their own feet, training them and in some cases, even financing them for setting up their own shop that sells Coca Cola beverages. Today the Indian villages have nearly 2.5 lakh women who run authorized Coca Cola shops. These women are supplied with solar coolers for keeping the beverages chilled.

This has been a new lease for life for many rural women who despite not being educated have a chance to earn money and become independent. Every woman also gets an insurance of Rs.1 lakh for accidental death or disability. Kudos to Coca Cola, they are indeed living to their tagline- ‘spreading joy’ across India!