Abhishek Securities

  “ Indian craft beer Bira91 to launch 3 brands in UK by end of February ” – read a local UK newspaper “ Bira91  –  Now in the Southern Hemisphere making sure Aussie summers just got more delicious!”  – read a post from personal LinkedIn handle of Bira91 CEO/founder Ankur Jain. With presence in 9 countries by January 2020, Bira91 plans on to expand to 16 countries by end of this financial year. The 5-year young company took onus of creating a “craft beer imagined in India” & is today a leader of craft beer market in India. Bira91, Craft Brews & Millennials – a love triangle Though a popular term, a few know what makes craft beers so special. A craft brew is one that is ideally organic, locally sourced(often) & not mass produced. Craft beer is made in a traditional or non-mechanized way by a small brewery. In 2014-15, India consumed about 270 million cases of beer among which craft beers—including microbreweries, made up only one percent of the market. The...

When we met at the Bira 91 headquarters in Delhi’s Connaught Place in March, Ankur Jain, CEO and founder of Bira 91,was in his usual attire—denims and a black T-shirt with the Bira monkey emblazoned on it. Months later, Jain and I are meeting virtually over a Microsoft Teams call. “It feels like we are living a different life," says Jain, dressed in the same T-shirt. The means of our communication may have changed but his attire hasn’t. Despite the pandemic bringing major sections of the economy to a halt, it has been an eventful year for Bira. In March, it launched the Bira 91 Limited Release Taproom in Koramangala, Bengaluru. Jain says the taproom was meant to be a place where they could host consumers and get them to try out new variants of their brews. It was almost like “crowd-sourcing" the next Bira 91. “The intent with the taproom was to get every consumer to rate and vote our beers, give us feedback on what they like about them and what they don’t. We want to incorpor...