Ashwin Balivada, Executive Director, Cheers Group
Out of seven billion people in the world, about three billion people drink. And, among the drinkers, 30% people are below the age of 30 which is one billion people, trying to change the
world in every aspect they can think of.
In the case of India, 49% of people are below the age of 30. A good number of this lot has a very high disposable income. People are trading up, drinking better alcohol every day.
People are open to experimenting with new sets of ingredients and spirits.
Three years ago I had just got to drink Old Monk, Thums Up and water. But today when I drink Old Monk, I mix it with my set of lime, spices and other ingredients which probably add to or
reflect my personality.
Recently I saw Jameson doing fantastic branding for creating a new-age whisky culture. Whisky is not just heritage and Scotch. It can be Irish. It can be a mixing with pine apple juice or lime. This thing is picking up today in the drinking culture.
In beer, the whole craft thing is coming up. In some microbreweries in Bangalore, I have seen about 17 taps serving different kinds of beer and the consumer is also open to try all of them over a period of month or so. He is also open to having new flavours every weekend, every month. People are ready to experiment and people are ready to associate the drink with their personality, culture, friends and eco system.
Among new brands, my friend Ankur has come up with Bira beer which is doing phenomenally well in Goa. He has come up with a different brand positioning. Bira is priced one and half
times the price of regular beer. The idea is that you actually getting out there, having the bottle of Bira in hand sitting on the beach in Goa. It creates a certain kind of brand value.
I am heading a project in England which is sponsored by the UK government. It’s called Zymurgy Inc. We are creating a British way for the world. This whole thing I can relate to new-age drinking. When we did market research we found that Britain was more about having heritage, old school, preen, the Union Jack. But the new-age British culture is about rustic
music, punk, being rebel, creating something which is out of the box. It’s something like the difference between British Airways and Virgin Airlines. You have a completely different
feeling when flying on British Airways than on Virgin Airlines.
In our project we tried to identify the kind of consumers who associate with the brand. Local brand ambassadors are being created. We are not marketing this brand as a mainstream product. Actually, we are looking at it as a product to fill the gap between craft and mainstream beer. I see craft beer as extremely local. It is within the radius of 30 miles, but mainstream beer is the thing which goes across the world. We wanted to create something between the two and associating it with one billion people who are ready to experiment. This I think is the ideal strategy for Zymurgy.
While interacting with consumers across stores, duty free and certain bars across the country and across the world, I have found that there is a fixed brand the consumer is drinking. For example, he is interacting with Blender’s Pride every day, but he is also flirting with other brands like Teacher’s, Black and White, Johnny Walkers and single malts. He is trying to create a sense of individuality when he is drinking. In the future probably a mix of several malts – a thing like a mix of Japanese malts, Scotch malts and Indian malts – could be a fantastic whisky to look.
Bringing a cocktail culture to whisky would be a value creation in the segment. In future, I see a lot of signature bars coming up, like exclusive single malts bars, Indian blended whisky bars, craft whisky bars, and gin bars. This is something very exciting to look at.
Regarding new-age drinking, change is the only constant because what was there a year ago is not there today and what is present today I am not sure that it is going be there six months down the line.