INDUSTRY VETERAN CREATES NEW MARKETPLACE FOR SMART LIQUOR BRANDS

In the 10-15 minutes of free time he got before my phone call, Rahul Gagerna, co-founder and Managing Director, Boutique Spirit Brands (BSB), had already thought of 10-15 names of future products and asked one of his managers to start getting them registered. Indeed, the former Radico Khaitan top executive and alumnus of the prestigious Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, is a man who doesn’t wish to let any opportunity go by. His business, after all, is all about finding unmet needs, or cracks of unseen opportunity, in what appears to be a saturated alcoholic beverages market.

Gagerna’s hard work over the last three years seems to have paid off. His portfolio now has five brands—G ladius Blended 10YO Gold Reserve Rum (the latest) and its citrus equivalent, Gladius Limoni; Zeus XO (brandy); Jordy’s Bar (whisky); and Cliff Hangar (vodka—all sleekly packaged and targeted at the experimental younger generation “who do not wish to be limited by the choices available to their elders”. Together, the five BSB brands are commercially available in 13 states and Union Territories, and they had notched up Rs 225 crore in the last pre-Covid financial year, 2019-20.

As it moves towards its conclusion, 2020-21 doesn’t look all that gloomy. In December 2020, Gagerna informed us, his sales numbers were the same as what they had notched up in the same month a year back. Unsurprisingly, he is already planning the launch of three to four brands in the year ahead. He needs all the new names he can conjure up.