Coca-Cola‘s global chief executive James Quincey has flown into India to take stock of what is the beverage maker’s fifth largest market by volumes, executives directly aware of the developments said. On his India visit, Quincey is scheduled to address employees, meet bottling partners and do market visits.

India is a crucial market for Coca-Cola, a country where the beverage maker is aiming to push growth of soft drinks at a time when it remains resilient amid global volatility.

An email sent to Coca-Cola seeking details and comments about Quincey’s visit remained unanswered till press time on Wednesday. “India is a high priority market for Coca-Cola, with huge under-penetrated category potential, providing a significant runway for growth. Hence the importance of this market among company leadership,” an executive with knowledge of the developments said.

The company’s global president and chief financial officer John Murphy too has visited India in recent months.

The Atlanta-based beverage maker had called out its India unit reporting its ‘strongest’ year in terms of volume growth in 2022, its fifth largest market by volume. However, the ongoing April-June quarter has seen usually cool weather and excess unseasonal rains across North India, impacting offtake of all summer-centric product categories like soft drinks, ice-creams and ACs.

The April-June summer quarter contributes the majority of annual sales for soft drinks. But there is no heat wave for the first time since 2014 across North India, according to weather forecaster IMD.For the last reported January-March quarter, Coca-Cola’s India unit stepped up availability of its products to over 300,000 stores, driving 3 billion transactions, the company had said in its global earnings statement.The maker of Coke and Thums Up drinks had said it had added 40,000 coolers in the quarter ahead of the summer season.

Quincey had called out India’s economy as “resilient with a strong job market and robust consumption”, attributing growth of its India business to higher number of retailers, investments made in cold-drink equipment and pricing.