THERE is one soft drink in India that will never fear the brunt of a nationwide ban on American-made beverage products like Coke and Pepsi, and that is Sosyo. Have you heard of Sosyo? You haven't! It is the only indigenously made soft drink in India. And its USP is that Sosyo tastes like alcohol. But it is not. It is a cider-type fruit drink made of a heady apple and grape cocktail that packs quite a punch when had absolutely chilled. Some people have it as a pick-me-up. Others have it because they cannot stand the taste of colas. Great drinkers of the country have been fooled into believing that they are drinking a fizzy mix of whisky, rum and soda when offered Sosyo for the very first time. It is my advice: you must drink Sosyo at least three times to get hooked onto it. And please have it cold. No, have it chilled. Anything less than that, and the Sosyo will taste like medicine! I know. I am never happier than when nursing a bottled pulled straight out of the freezer.

Farazdaq Hajoori, the production director of Sosyo, says the soft drink traces its origins to Surat in 1927. His grandfather, an enterprising Dawoodi Bohra gentleman by the name of Mohsin Hajoori, introduced the drink in reply to Mahatma Gandhi's call for a swadeshi movement. At that time, there were only English drinks available in India, and Grandpa Mohsin realised that if you banned these, then there must be something to replace them with in the country. He provided Sosyo... only the soft drink wasn't called Sosyo then. Realising that its alcohol-like taste was a bit of an advantage as well as disadvantage, Grandpa Mohsin named his product "Whisky No". "Which," explains Farazdaq, "meant that it was free of alcohol, but the name was also a catch for drinkers!"

The ploy worked and "Whisky No" swept the Surat market and slowly began to make inroads elsewhere in the country. Elsewhere being wherever it was that Grandpa Mohsin could hitch up a bullock-cart and ride himself to sell his amazing new product. "He was an all-rounder," says Farazdaq. "He manufactured "Whisky No" and sold it himself. His soda-making machine he got from London. Then when Indian companies started making semi-automatic, hand-filling soda machines, he went in for them. His formula for the drink remains unchanged. Only "Whisky No" underwent a name change in 1960. The Hajoori family decided to call it "Sosyo". Why Sosyo? Because one of the key ingredients in the soft drink, the essence, came from Italy. And we discovered that in Italian the word for a social drink is "socio". So we came up with the name Sosyo."

Today the parent company, Hajoori & Sons, Surat, has got several franchises for Sosyo. There is Sosyo Products in Bombay, Rainbow Products in Rajkot, Thakkar Soda Factory in Ahmedabad, Happy Bottling Company in Baroda, Shri Siddhi Vinayaka Bottling in Udipi. To become a franchisee for Sosyo (and the Hajoori family is looking actively for franchisees to take and promote the soft drink), what you need to have is a washing and bottling machine, a chilling plant, boiler, sand and carbon filters, a reverse osmosis plant (unless you are in Bombay, then you don't need this, because the water in Bombay is very good), ultra-violet lights, microfilters for quality control, and a plate heat exchanger that turns the drink from hot to cold, that introduces carbon-di-oxide, that produces more fizz, and kills all bacteria. With this, and with an introduction to the Hajoori family, you can get into the Sosyo manufacturing business. But you will only add the gas and right percentage of water to the secret Sosyo formula that the family will send you from Surat. You will never be told what it is.

Sosyo came to Bombay in 1957 along with three other soft drinks from the Hajoori family of Surat. They were On-e-Ka, an orange-based fizz drink that is like Mirinda and Goldspot today; Pineax, a pineapple drink; and, Kashmira Masala Soda, which is a dry soda. "Like Canada Dry," suggests Farazdaq helpfully. The company also introduced several sherbet syrups like Footreat and Shoorbat that were made of natural and synthetic fruit extracts, and drinks like Lemee Misty and Lemee Orange. But clearly Sosyo and Kashmira Masala Soda were the winners from the Hajoori stable. They are available all over Gujarat and in Bombay and sold through retailers, restaurants and hotels. "Some medical stores also keep them," says Farazdaq. And that is perhaps because Kashmira is like a medicinal drink, a digestive, and it is sometimes more popular than Sosyo. Especially with people who eat rich, oily and spicy food. "It is like the Sachin Tendulkar of drinks," says Farazdaq proudly. "An all-rounder. A very different kind of satisfying drink."

He is showing me around the Unique Beverages Pvt. Ltd. in Rabale, New Bombay, which is a plant belonging to Hajoori & Sons of Surat, and from where Sosyo is manufactured in Bombay. Michael George, his marketing manager, a rugged man wearing a Sosyo T-shirt over jeans and a Sosyo peak-cap, tells me that Gujarat is the main market for Sosyo. Although there are plants coming up in Jaipur and a distributor has been located and a bottler is being searched for in Bhopal as well. "In Bombay, Sosyo is had by a very middle-age clientele, but in Gujarat, it is the rage. The soft drink is very popular with all ages. Its sales are on par with Pepsi and Coke in Gujarat. In fact, it has captured 35 per cent of the soft drinks market there. The Pepsi and Coke people are amazed at its success. They keep trying to find out what its flavour is all about. And because Gujarat is a prohibition state, I suppose, people must enjoy the alcohol flavour of Sosyo more there!" Farazdaq Hajoori talks, finally, about marketing his wonderful product in India. "We are not able to market it like the multi-nationals do their soft drinks, obviously. And we are not interested in their backing. We want to be the only purely Indian soft drink company. We are not interested in doing business with the multinationals. They kick out franchisees later on. But certainly, we will look at Indian backing. We are looking for franchisees all over India. Or people wanting to go into partnership with us. We need finance and marketing. We have the product. Right now radio advertisements, slides in cinema houses, commercials on video films, that's about all we can afford. But marketing makes a difference, yes, especially with the younger generation. Shah Rukh Khan and Hrithik Roshan are beyond our budget. But Ketki Dave of Saas Bhi Kabhi Bahu Thi is not. It does not matter whether Shah Rukh is drinking Pepsi or not. Or whether Hrithik Roshan is wearing Tamarind or not. The sales of the products they endorse go up by 40 per cent."

And who would the Hajoori family choose to advertise Sosyo if they had the budget and were looking at marketing the soft drink in a big manner, I ask. Farazdaq Hajoori says without batting an eye, "We would choose Jennifer Lopez!"

Founder Members of Sosyo

Once upon a time in pre-Independent India, there was a teenager named Abbas Abdul Rahim Hajoori who sold areated soft drinks made by British bottlers. Young Hajoori had this tremendous thirst to prove that Indian soft drinks compared favourably with foreign brands. It was a thirst that he quenched with the establishment of Hajoori & Sons in Surat. In 1923, Hajoori & Sons set up their factory. Mohsin Abdul Rahim took over the reins of the company after the untimely demise of Abbas Abdul Rahim. The company reached new heights under his guardianship. It was the beginning of a new era for India�s soft drinks market and soft drink manufacturers.