The Real Thing: Coke’s Bumpy Ride through India, is a non-fiction real life story of the Atlanta-based The Coca Cola Company’s long troubled business journey, partly its own making and partly because of its wrong assessment of India’s regulatory system and administrative framework. The content combines a painstaking research by the author into various aspects of the company’s operations over a period of time and his insider’s knowledge with a reporter’s detachment.
Entering India in 1991 after a 14-year exile, Coke’s subsequent policies and practices have been mired in controversy. The pesticides in colas, the closure of the company’s Kerala plant following its exposé as a groundwater guzzler, and the company’s constant fight with environmentalists, social activists and the government provided the impetus for writing this book.
Having tracked Coke for over two decades, Nantoo Banerjee’s book provides, possibly for the first time in India, a well-researched look into the operation of a major multinational – its managerial practices, especially some of the critical moves and decisions taken by its senior executives in Atlanta, Tokyo, Hong Kong and New Delhi, internal intrigue, customer care policies, external pressures and ruthless ambition.
The book is brilliantly bold and lives up to the author's reputation as one of the country's best-known investigative business journalists, and a ‘must read’ for plumbing the depths of contemporary corporate ethics. Besides, the book provides a unique case study which would be a valuable companion to the management professionals, students, regulatory authorities and opinion leaders.