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COCO TANG India is an innovation-driven company. It takes inspiration from the humble coconut water that all of us are very familiar with and have drunk right from our childhood. The founders of the company, Dr Neelima, a dentist by profession and her husband Chaitanya who is a pharmacist have hit upon the idea of a coconut-based drink quite by accident.

When Dr Neelima was pregnant with her first child, the doctor advised her to take fresh coconut water. It was then that Dr Neelima discovered that fresh coconut water was a paradox, the water from a tender coconut is supposed to be fresh but in many cases is not as fresh as it should be. Coconuts are harvested from remote farms in Andhra Pradesh and sent to Hyderabad. And to top it all, the nutrition value of the coconut past its ideal window of consumption leaves a lot to desire. The price factor too is a dampener. It costs Rs. 25 to have tender coconut water in a metropolis like Hyderabad.

Dr Neelima and her husband developed the product idea from their search for a nutritious, healthy drink. Fresh, tender coconut pulp-based shakes, packed with nutrition, taste, health and at the same time make an aspirational product for the young, bubbly and restless youth of India.

This case deals with the problems, the trials and tribulations that these young first-time entrepreneurs faced and details the marketing efforts the young company is putting into survive in the dog eat dog world of fruit drink industry.

The case details the specific marketing-related problems the company faces and examines what the promoters are doing to overcome these problems, specifically related to the four Ps, that is, product, price, place and promotion. It looks in depth at the innovative marketing practices that COCO TANG India is deploying, including the use of the social media that enabled the COCO TANG India’s founder to win Junior Chamber International – Business Excellence Award for the year 2017–2018.

COCO TANG India is also the recipient of the Telugu book of records ‘certificate of national record’ as being the first brand to introduce Tender Coconut-based Mocktails and Milkshakes (A1).

The increasing accumulation of synthetic plastic waste in oceans and landfills, along with the depletion of non-renewable fossil-based resources, has sparked environmental concerns and prompted the search for environmentally friendly alternatives. Biodegradable plastics derived from lignocellulosic materials are emerging as substitutes for synthetic plastics, offering significant potential to reduce landfill stress and minimise environmental impacts. This study highlights a sustainable and cost-effective solution by utilising agricultural residues and invasive plant materials as carbon substrates for the production of biopolymers, particularly polyhydroxybutyrate (PHB), through microbiological processes. Locally sourced residual materials were preferred to reduce transportation costs and ensure accessibility. The selection of suitable residue streams was based on various criteria, including strength properties, cellulose content, low ash and lignin content, affordability, non-toxicity, biocompatibility, shelf-life, mechanical and physical properties, short maturation period, antibacterial properties and compatibility with global food security. Life cycle assessments confirm that PHB dramatically lowers CO₂ emissions compared to traditional plastics, while the growing use of lignocellulosic biomass in biopolymeric applications offers renewable and readily available resources. Governments worldwide are increasingly inclined to develop comprehensive bioeconomy policies and specialised bioplastics initiatives, driven by customer acceptability and the rising demand for environmentally friendly solutions. The implications of climate change, price volatility in fossil materials, and the imperative to reduce dependence on fossil resources further contribute to the desirability of biopolymers. The study involves fermentation, turbidity measurements, extraction and purification of PHB, and the manufacturing and testing of composite biopolymers using various physical, mechanical and chemical tests.

Sundarban is the largest active delta in the world lying at the estuaries of the Rivers Ganga and Brahmaputra. This region is rich in biodiversity and declared World Heritage Site by UNESCO. This delta region is prone to severe natural disasters as well as man-induced catastrophic events. Gosaba Block which is identified as the study area located in Indian part of the Sundarban delta, in South Twenty Four Parganas district of West Bengal puts forward an ideal portrait for people’s struggle and survival strategies against natural disasters. An attempt has been made in this chapter to study the perception of the main occupational groups on the effects of major natural disasters viz. floods, tidal surges and cyclones in Gosaba Block. An endeavor has also been made to explore local survival strategies which are effective for their sustenance in this vulnerable region. Three-hundred persons from different occupational groups, that is, people engaged in agriculture, fishing, crab collection, tiger prawn seed collection, wood collection and honey collection have been surveyed through a pre-designed questionnaire. Six Focus Group Discussions have been conducted, in which each of the groups comprised six members from a particular occupation. The study has revealed that all the occupational groups perceive threats differently from natural disasters and their perceptions vary according to their levels of exposure to the environment. To cope with the natural disasters, each occupational group has devised distinct survival strategies. For proper management of natural disasters in Sundarban delta region, the perception of people with different livelihoods and their survival strategies should be incorporated.

This chapter probes the issue of capital mobility and its implications in the context of the globalization of the fresh fruit sector. In particular, it explores the relationship between productive capital and labor in two different Latin American regions: the Northeast of Brazil and Patagonia in Argentina. Employing a comparative approach, it studies the impact that the insertion of local production into global circuits has on local firms and labor. These relatively culturally and geographically distant locations are affected by similar phenomena created by the globalization of agrifood. Relevant among then are the marginalization of labor and a weak labor structure. While there has been the growth of local firms, this growth has not erased important weaknesses.

Increases in international tourism have been associated with increased livelihood opportunities and the creation of microenterprises in developing and less developed economies. An exploratory study examining the motivations for engaging in a microenterprise and the perceptions of the benefits of tourism was conducted with participants from Vientiane, Laos. It was found the microentrepreneurs in the study were mostly pushed into engaging in microenterprises due to the lack of employment opportunities and thus were creating their own jobs as opposed to being pulled into starting a business in search of wealth or lifestyle benefits. All participants of the study believed international tourism created more benefits than problems for both themselves and the country.

The racialized gendered body in consumer culture invokes the construction of identities and representation of beauty through embodiment practices. As companies hone in on consumer racial marker distinctions to enhance uniqueness as otherness for profit, an analysis of hair products marketed for Black hair textures provides an opportunity to analyze how products use these at the intersection of race, gender, and beauty. This study uses constructivist grounded theory to analyze the product names and long descriptions for 124 shampoos marketed for Black hair textures on the websites of two major retailers to answer the following questions: What message does the discourse of shampoo product descriptions marketed to Black hair textures communicate about beauty? What message does the discourse of shampoo product descriptions marketed to Black hair textures communicate about Blackness? How does this discourse define the embodiment of Black beauty through hair? The results reveal that the racialized gendered body in consumer culture invokes the construction of identities and representations of beauty through embodiment practices. Through advertisements and product descriptions, beauty companies create ideal images of the lived experiences achieved through consuming beauty products. By constructing visual interpretations of racial signifiers through text, marketing strategies encourage the consumption of otherness, creating a racialized space for Blackness consumption. Combining the five senses with the descriptions of shampoo products marketed for Black hair textures helps us see how beauty embodiment practices reinforce racialized and gendered practices to subjugate the Black body.

Cruise ships visiting Belize is a recent and fast-growing aspect of the nation's largest economic sector, tourism. Many Belizean businesses are very small and informal; potential access to cruise ship visitors provides an opportunity for growth and income stability. We investigate the challenges and opportunities informal microenterprises face in the cruise tourism marketplace through qualitative interviews at three popular tourist destinations: Xunantunich (Maya ruins), Community Baboon Sanctuary (Howler Monkeys), and Jaguar Paw (cave river tubing). The results indicate that despite robust growth in cruise tourism, local microentrepreneurs are currently disenfranchised, receiving few economic benefits from the cruise trade. We propose several recommendations to allow Belizean microentrepreneurs and the local economy to capture more economic benefits.

The provision of food is a critical starting point from which to understand the articulations between production and consumption locales. In research carried in Northeastern Brazil, we have found that increasingly local spaces of production and distribution of food are under tight control by external (retailer) regulations. From the choosing of plots, to land uses, to labour contracting, to cultural, environmental and packing practices, there is much evidence that food quality is an issue under view. On the other, there are widely known concerns about food safety and food security, which, in the Brazilian case, is shown through Hunger Zero – a governmental project to alleviate poverty. In this chapter, I will argue for the relevance of exploring the dynamics of food by looking at local markets, agricultural and supermarkets units, government and labour strategies, as developed in the Northeastern region. Based on case studies and related literature, the argument is that the distribution of food around the world is very much a combination of transnational corporations actions and local development strategies; and without exploring the possible contradiction here, it would not be possible to understand how packing houses, state distribution units as well as agricultural and retailer distribution units would come into the local development agenda, contributing to the making of quality food to the world's consumers. Several case studies developed by our team of researchers will illuminate the analyses.