Why is Dasani called Kinley in India?

December 21, 2005 7:05 AM

India Bottled-Water Filter -- I noticed in India that Dasani brand is sold as "Kinley." Why? Does the word "dasani" mean something nasty in Hindi (or another Indian tongue)?
posted by nancoix to food & drink (23 comments total)

I expect it has to do with how Coca Cola operated in India. They were expelled from the country for a while, and when they came back, they found several local brands had easily become the most popular. Rather than ruin the great recognition these brands had, they purchased the business (such as Thums Up) and operated them with "Coca Cola" printed in small writing on the bottles!

I expect the same thing happened with that brand of water as well...
posted by shepd at 7:25 AM on December 21, 2005

It sounds like pure marketing (if that's not an oxymoron) to me. When people buy bottled water, they want it to be something they can't get from the tap, i.e., not something that sounds like local water.
posted by pracowity at 7:27 AM on December 21, 2005

Dasani doesn't mean anything nasty in Hindi ( I am a native speaker of the language) and though shepd is partly right, in that Coca-Cola did purchase a lot of products with immense brand equity, I don't think Kinley was one of them.

As far as I can tell, this must be something that the marketing dept. would have come up with. Kinley would sound, how do I put it, more sophisticated to the Indian consumer than Dasani as the terms 'Das' and 'Dasi' are the masculine and feminine for servant, in Hindi. But I might be wrong.
posted by sk381 at 7:59 AM on December 21, 2005

I think it's weird that both Dasani and Kinley evoke the highest point in North America.
posted by bendybendy at 8:12 AM on December 21, 2005

Kinley might be C-C's brand name for water overseas. It's used here in Israel to brand club soda, ginger ale and tonic water.
posted by felix betachat at 8:23 AM on December 21, 2005

Could you explain how Dasani evokes the highest point in North America?
posted by sk381 at 9:14 AM on December 21, 2005

Dasani is filtered tap water, right?
posted by A189Nut at 9:19 AM on December 21, 2005

Denali is the native name for Mount McKinley, the tallest mountain in the US. I think it's probably fair to say that both "Dasani" and "Kinley" are vaguely evocative of "Denali" and "McKinley".
posted by Ethereal Bligh at 9:21 AM on December 21, 2005

Dasani is basically distilled water into which a controlled amount of minerals are added to give it some flavor. Distilled water is basically tasteless and it's the impurities (within reason) that are responsible for water's taste.
posted by tommasz at 9:24 AM on December 21, 2005

Different brands for the same water isn't anything unusual -- in the US alone Nestle Waters has at least 6 brand names for the same product
posted by o2b at 9:44 AM on December 21, 2005

Old news then that it isn't sold in the UK any longer
posted by A189Nut at 9:46 AM on December 21, 2005

Erg, I can't link directly to the brand page.

Anyway, for basic water in the US, Nestle Waters has Poland Springs, Ozarka, Arrowhead, Deer Park, Ice Mountain and Zephyrhills.

The difference is purely branding.
posted by o2b at 9:46 AM on December 21, 2005

Dasani does start as tap water from the bottling location, then distilled and adulterated as mentioned above. Coke freely admitted such a couple of years ago when some consumer groups were shocked, shocked to discover that coke was selling "bottled tap water".
posted by bonehead at 11:44 AM on December 21, 2005

(and it's not actually heat-distilled, it's pushed through a reverse-osmosis membrane with the same end result).
posted by bonehead at 11:46 AM on December 21, 2005

Probably because the marketing department thought some of us Indians would consider it Kinley a more "foreign" or "sophisticated" brand name.

Dasani doesn't mean anything in Hindi, but it does sound like it could be an Indian name somewhere. That's why they might have dropped it.

The Pepsi equivalent is sold here under the brand name "Aquafina".
posted by madman at 1:08 PM on December 21, 2005

Nestle Waters has Poland Springs, Ozarka, Arrowhead, Deer Park, Ice Mountain and Zephyrhills... The difference is purely branding.

Thank goodness. When I spent a lot of time in FL about 3 yrs ago Zephyrhills was the local brand and it had a "Floridian" taste that I never could get past. Poland Spring, I think, was okay (the Coke and Pepsi products definitely were.) Hopefully Nestle's addressed the Zephyrhills flavor issue.
posted by Opposite George at 1:15 PM on December 21, 2005

It's called Aquafina at least in the UK and US as well so that's not India-specific branding.
posted by keijo at 1:15 PM on December 21, 2005

It's called Aquafina at least in the UK and US as well so that's not India-specific branding.

I didn't say it was. ;)
Just threw it out there as a bit of trivia.
posted by madman at 10:15 PM on December 21, 2005

I was at the Airport in Phoenix today, and they had Kinley water. I too had never heard of it.
posted by rfordh at 12:57 AM on December 22, 2005

Am I the only one who would be frightened to by Zephyrhills water because it totally reminds me of the word syphillis?
posted by antifuse at 1:35 AM on December 22, 2005

Yes
posted by yclipse at 6:04 AM on December 22, 2005

Uh, no, Nestle's multiple water brands aren't all from the same source. They're different waters. Just because Nestle owns all of them doesn't mean they're the same; they're bottled from different springs in different regions and were almost all once local springwater bottlers that Nestle bought.
posted by evariste at 4:25 PM on December 22, 2005

Aquafina is the Pepsi competition.

My question is: Since Indian tap water is reputedly unsafe for visitors, is Kinley processed tap water safe?
posted by joeclark at 5:35 AM on December 28, 2005