Brewed To Taste
Beer start-ups are rising up to challenge legacy brands
- Jul 8, 2019,
- Updated Jul 10, 2019 9:47 PM IST
The evening we met Avneet Singh, The Beer Cafe in Nehru Place was throbbing with loud banter. The upper floor of the bar was cramped with those in skinny jeans and tight shirts; the television, on mute, was airing a Virat Kohli interview; tabletop papers told you "we don't screw your brew"; there were nachos and an exhaustive menu that showed pages after pages of domestic and imported beer.
One of them, Medusa, is a strong lager. The menu describes it as "a premium strong beer with soothing bitterness and hoppy aroma".
This Indian beer is less than two years old. Singh, one of the founders, was a teetotaller till recently but now does a perfect pour, inducing an one-and-a-half inch head of foam in the mug - it releases the aroma and prevents bloating when you drink it. He also makes the right noises. "Medusa is best paired with friends," he says with a laugh. In its first year, the beer brand raked in Rs 70 crore. Singh and his other co-founders have been part of the liquor retail and wholesale business for more than a decade and are well versed with the distribution game. Even then, it is never easy in India's liquor business where every state has a different excise policy.
Nevertheless, beer making start-ups are willing to take a bet. Just like Medusa, there is a sprinkling of new brands who want to disrupt India's $6 billion-beer market which saw little product innovation for decades and is dominated by legacy brands such as Kingfisher, Budweiser and Carlsberg.
Start-ups, at times, call their beer 'craft'. It implies being manufactured in a small, independent brewery with high quality malt and water. By saying craft, they want to make a distinction from 'industrial' or mass beer. Others just prefer to call their product 'flavoured'. Natural ingredients such as orange peel can be introduced during the beer-making process to make it aromatic. Craft or flavoured beer forms less than 2 per cent of the market today, but is brewing well at around 30 per cent a year, according to some estimates. Bira 91 is the largest of the new lot and has set a high benchmark for others to emulate. The company started around 2015 and is producing about 600,000 cases a month (one case has 24 bottles or cans). Simba launched in 2016 and generated a turnover of Rs 125 crore in 2018/19. Mumbai-based White Owl Brewery sells more than 20,000 cases a month, across five cities. Witlinger, which started in 2014, does a similar volume, selling in Delhi, Goa, and Bengaluru.
The evening we met Avneet Singh, The Beer Cafe in Nehru Place was throbbing with loud banter. The upper floor of the bar was cramped with those in skinny jeans and tight shirts; the television, on mute, was airing a Virat Kohli interview; tabletop papers told you "we don't screw your brew"; there were nachos and an exhaustive menu that showed pages after pages of domestic and imported beer.
One of them, Medusa, is a strong lager. The menu describes it as "a premium strong beer with soothing bitterness and hoppy aroma".
This Indian beer is less than two years old. Singh, one of the founders, was a teetotaller till recently but now does a perfect pour, inducing an one-and-a-half inch head of foam in the mug - it releases the aroma and prevents bloating when you drink it. He also makes the right noises. "Medusa is best paired with friends," he says with a laugh. In its first year, the beer brand raked in Rs 70 crore. Singh and his other co-founders have been part of the liquor retail and wholesale business for more than a decade and are well versed with the distribution game. Even then, it is never easy in India's liquor business where every state has a different excise policy.
Nevertheless, beer making start-ups are willing to take a bet. Just like Medusa, there is a sprinkling of new brands who want to disrupt India's $6 billion-beer market which saw little product innovation for decades and is dominated by legacy brands such as Kingfisher, Budweiser and Carlsberg.
Start-ups, at times, call their beer 'craft'. It implies being manufactured in a small, independent brewery with high quality malt and water. By saying craft, they want to make a distinction from 'industrial' or mass beer. Others just prefer to call their product 'flavoured'. Natural ingredients such as orange peel can be introduced during the beer-making process to make it aromatic. Craft or flavoured beer forms less than 2 per cent of the market today, but is brewing well at around 30 per cent a year, according to some estimates. Bira 91 is the largest of the new lot and has set a high benchmark for others to emulate. The company started around 2015 and is producing about 600,000 cases a month (one case has 24 bottles or cans). Simba launched in 2016 and generated a turnover of Rs 125 crore in 2018/19. Mumbai-based White Owl Brewery sells more than 20,000 cases a month, across five cities. Witlinger, which started in 2014, does a similar volume, selling in Delhi, Goa, and Bengaluru.