Venky Soda

Our address is 3-15-17 on the Ramachandrapuram Road in Draksharamam. It is a pretty straightforward place. We have a small storefront and a large back area for the gas cylinders and the bottling equipment. Draksharamam is a traditional kind of town, and we fit right in with the old buildings around us. The road outside can get dusty when the tractors go by, so we are always wiping down the counters. We’ve got a few old chairs out front where some of the older men sit and talk. The work is mostly manual. We load the crates onto the cycle rickshaws or small autos to send them out to the villages. The machine we use for the soda is an older model, but it still makes the best bubbles. You have to know exactly how to pull the lever. Sometimes the power goes out, and we just sit and wait for it to come back on. It is a slow pace of life here. We don't have a marketing team or anything like that. We just rely on the fact that people in Draksharamam know our name and where we are. The shop has been in the same family for a bit, and we don't plan on moving. It’s just home for us. We keep the doors open and the drinks cold for anyone who stops by the road.