Making of Double Seven
The road to making an Indian cola was now clear. Desai’s party, to celebrate the year of their victory, named the cola ‘77’. But the name was already being used by a running, but unregistered soft drink, called “77”, manufactured by a Pune-based firm.
“The only person to have gained materially from the dispute (between Coca-Cola and the Indian government) so far is Hari Vishnu Kamath, the Janata MP, who has received a Rs 10,000 prize for suggesting the name Seven-Seven…,” India Today wrote.
After negotiations with the Pune-based firm, Modern Bakeries acquired the legal rights of the brand name and developed the concentrate for the drink.
The responsibility of developing concentrate for the drink was given to another government-run institution – Central Food and Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), Karnataka, Mysore.
Goodbye Double Seven
The drink faced tough competition from other popular drinks in the market including Campa Cola, Thums Up and Duke – all of which had also come about in the same time.
However, its taste failed to make an impact. “In my younger days, I was crazy about Coca-Cola. Despite repeated assurance from the government that Double Seven tastes like Coca Cola, we found no match. The fizz was much lesser, the taste of Double Seven was very sweet and the punch of drinking a cold-drink was missing,” said Anant Sharma, a 54-year-old government banking official in New Delhi.
Like Sharma, many Indians did not appreciate the taste of India’s local cola, due to which the venture failed to make healthy profits.
“March 1978 ended with a loss of Rs 3.87 lakh for the first half-year of operations. In March 1979, the expenditure had risen to Rs 39 lakh and profit to a measly Rs 93,000. By 1983, the government stopped giving out specific profit/loss figures for Double Seven,” according to a detailed post by a blogger, Pastmaster, on Medium.
However, the figures could not be verified independently.
Moreover, in 1979, Desai’s government collapsed, impacting the future of the brand even more.
In 1980, Indira Gandhi-led Congress came back to power. “Her government, while not against the brand, did not favour it like Desai’s government. The brand died a natural death after it failed to impress the audience and collect money for its sustenance,” said Santosh Sood, former chief operating officer of brand and ad-agency, Rediffusion Y&R.
In 1993, Coca-Cola was back in India in a big way. And the rest, as they say, is history.