Soft drinks giants Coca-Cola and Pepsi have signed on thousands of new retailers in a drive into rural India that has pushed up sales steeply.

Coca-Cola has made its beverages available in 40,000 additional villages in the last three years.

As a result, the rural areas now contribute 35 per cent of the company's sales compared with 25 per cent in 2000.

"Sales volumes have jumped by over 125 per cent in some rural areas," Coca-Cola India deputy president Sanjiv Gupta said.

In order to service far-flung markets better, Coca-Cola has doubled the number of refrigerators in the market to 500,000 and added 5,000 new autos and light commercial vehicles to its fleet in the last one year.

While refusing to divulge absolute numbers, Pepsi also says it has doubled distributors, cooling capacity and even the number of vehicles in rural areas.

Thus, the contribution of rural areas to total sales has climbed from below 10 per cent to 10-15 per cent for Pepsi in the last couple of years.

Pepsi has added more than 200 people to drive rural activation programmes and ensure improved coverage and market penetration. In addition, a new "hub and spoke" model has been put in place to drive the rural expansion plan.

"The model drives revenue as critical glass turns around faster, thereby providing an opportunity to expand rural coverage and allowing penetration into markets that were previously logistically unreachable," a Pepsi spokesperson said.

Both companies say there is untapped potential in the rural areas that will fuel quick growth in the coming years. Per capita soft drinks consumption in rural areas is only 2.8 litres compared with 7.4 litres nationally.

In comparison, urban dwellers in the country's top metros, who form 4.2 per cent of the country's population, consume 49 litres annually.

Increased penetration in rural areas is driving growth for both Coke and Pepsi. Growth in the soft drinks sector was almost stagnant two years ago but has now climbed to over 40 per cent.

The growth rates have been achieved by a combination of aggressive marketing and new strategies. One powerful driver has been the 200 ml packs introduced to target rural areas.

Gupta says while only four rotations of 300 ml bottles could happen in one year, the 200 ml bottles are coming back at least 10-14 times.

He added that the capacity was being fully utilised this year and the year round capacity utilisation had gone up from 50 per cent to 75 per cent.

However, growth was not only happening in rural areas but even in metros like Hyderabad and Delhi, where consumption had risen by more than 75 per cent, Gupta added.