Making of India s first microbrewery Story Comments Post a commentEmail this articleMail This Article Print this articleSave

this articleMy Saved articlesReduce font sizeIncrease fon t sizeShare on HotklixShare on FacebookShare on Twitter Hotklix Digg Google Bookmarks StumbleUpon Reddit Newsvine Live Bookmarks Technorati Yahoo Bookmarks Blogmarks Del.icio.us Facebook ApnaCircle 0 inShare.Prateek Chaturvedi remembers the day he kicked a Rs 36-lakh-a-year job a t Procter & Gamble's Singapore office to join a microbrewery in the city's Clark Quay area as a part-time waiter. As an intern at 'Brewwerkz', he earned no mone y, worked inside the brew house and even got a chance to manage the place when t he manager was away. "The experience was tough, but invaluable. I wanted to understand how they ran t he business and got to know it inside-out," says Mr Chaturvedi. Around the same time, his colleague at P&G, Suketu Talekar, returned to Pune and started studyin g the Maharashtra state's liquor licensing policy. Soon, Chaturvedi would join h im, and the two would launch Doolally, India's first microbrewery. It was at Brewwerkz that the two IIM graduates, then posted in P&G Singapore, us ed to hang out in the evenings. One heady evening, an idea started brewing. As Mr Talekar remembers, "We thought aloud that if the beer at a microbrewery was so good and if this was something that had not been introduced to India so far, maybe it was time to do so as grow ing incomes and rising consumer aspirations in urban India made it a winning ide a." That same day, the two decided to quit their jobs and start working on their project. A microbrewery is one where the beer is brewed fresh. The brewmaster here can us e a variety of ingredients to turn out a diverse selection of beers. Mr Talekar remembers the challenges, "The existing licenses allowed breweries to either man ufacture, distribute or retail their beer; the microbrewery business model is on e where we had to do all three. Eventually, after fourteen months, the brewery l icense was modified to accommodate microbreweries like ours." One of the key learnings for Chaturvedi was the importance of both maintaining t he quality of beer and changing the types of brews. To ensure this, they reached out to Oliver Schauff, a noted brewmaster based out of Germany and offered him equity stake in the company. By September 2006, the team was in place. They also zeroed in on Pune to launch since it offered a comparative low cost base. They needed to raise around Rs 2.5 crores to make their dream a reality. The inv estments came from angel investors Mahesh Murthy, Sharad Khadakia and Pramod Cho udhary (of Praj IndustriesBSE 0.62 %) who put in around Rs 1 crore. To save on costs, they built the brewhouse locally instead of importing it. All the raw material such as iron and steel was sourced from Laxmi Road area in Pune and were machined in local workshops. The location for their first microbrewery was the upmarket Corinthians Club. While the brewery infrastructure costs are b orne by Doolally, the restaurant is managed by the bar and around 15% of the rev enues are shared with the bar. By October 2009, their first microbrewery opened doors to the public. They project revenues of Rs 1.9 crore in 2010-11, with a gr owth rate of 15-20%. Mr Chaturvedi and Mr Talekar project a breakeven in around three years.

The brewmaster prepares different flavours. "Apart from the Lager, we offer flav ours such as Wheat Beer, Santa's Ale, the English Brown Ale and the Greenlandic Ale," says Schauff. For the immediate future, Talekar indicates which path he's leaning towards. "Ka rnataka, Punjab and Delhi-NCR now have all been issued microbrewery licenses. We want to gain first mover's advantage and build our brands there." The Doolally brew has certainly seen the two experience a high so far, and they will be trying to emulate microbreweries of the West, many of them, which have s uccessfully launched million dollar IPOs. Until then, raise a toast to the healt h of enterprise.