Coca-Cola India launched the 5by20 initiative in 2010, which is the company’s global program to economically empower 5 million women entrepreneurs across six industries by 2020.

[8] Coca Cola sales in India declined 11% in the third quarter of 2003 due to allegations by the Delhi-based Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), which said the top 12 soft drink brands of PepsiCo and Coca-Cola contained pesticides and insecticides in excess of the limits set by the European Economic Commission (EEC).

The company sold the slurry and sludge waste as fertilizer to locals, primarily engaged in farming, which was later found to contain dangerous levels of toxic metals in a study conducted by University of Exeter.

[10] Eventually, locals mobilized under the banner 'Coca-Cola Virudha Janakeeya Samara Samithy' (Anti Coca-Cola Peoples Struggle Committee) and demanded that the factory be closed and farmers be compensated.

The cause of the farmers became international with a BBC investigatory report and later in 2007 when college students in the United States ran a nationwide campaign calling for a boycott of Coca-Cola.