new delhi local soft drink players who were slapped with a steep gst hike on fruitbased carbonated drinks last year have devised a novel way to stay afloat in the cutthroat indian beverage market in an industry first most are moving to a pack size of 160ml from the standard 200ml bottle that bears a price tag of rs 10 in addition they have lightened the pet preform from 115 gm to 10gm that is expected to result in another round of cost savings of 15 we were in dire straits when the gst hike was announced because of the heavy investments we had made in machinery to make carbonated fruitbased beverages said the proprietor of a haryanabased beverage maker while the big players could sustain the extra cost the smaller ones were on the verge of shutting shopas per previous regulations in case a drink contained fruit content greater than 10 255 in the case of limelemon it was taxed at 12 carbonated drinks without fruit content such as pepsi or coke however are subject to 40 last year after a series of raids by the authorities unearthed that several local players were not adding fruit pulp but yet availing the benefit of lower taxes on the drinks the taxes were increased to 40 which includes gst of 28 with an additional 12 of compensation cess toi was the first to report about these raids small players have no option other than moving to a smaller pack size there too the margin is hardly 12 because the price of preform has skyrocketed due to the ukraine war said akhil gupta proprietor of fresca juices we have moved to larger pack sizes such as one liter bottles that give us a margin of 78the trend to make carbonated fruitbased drinks started in 2014 when pm narendra modi urged companies to add 5 natural fruit juice to their drinks to help farmers this not only led to foreign beverage makers including coke to launch fruitbased carbonated drinks under established brand names but local manufacturers too had followed suit