Brewery entrepreneurship: How these four entrepreneurs brewed their startup stories

Tuesday April 07, 2015 , 4 min Read

Stressed after work? Grab a beer. Quit your job? Grab a beer. Starting up? Grab a beer.

Beer is one of the largest consumer categories in India ($5 billion in market size compared to $300 million for branded café/coffee market). It is also one of the fastest growing consumer categories, growing at double digit CAGR for the last 10 years. Craft beer has been a secular bright spot in the alcohol beverage category worldwide, and now commands almost 30% share in the profit pool in the American beer market. Did you know beer is also one of the most recession resilient industries in the market?

A friend recently told me that she had an upset stomach and four days of antibiotics couldn’t heal her but a chilled beer did. A host of entrepreneurs are now ditching the good old coffee shops and flocking to the closest microbreweries to not just craft their startup stories, but to taste some of the finest craft these hip and cool joints offer.

Here are four brands that crafted their story around one product -- beer!

1. Toit

When you think search; you think Google. When you think beer in Bangalore, you think Toit. Tucked quietly amidst a host of startups in and around Indiranagar, Toit traces its roots to a seed of thought that brought together four friends and restaurateurs together to create brand Toit. They serve about 2000 mugs of beer on a typical weekend day and strongly believe that their helpful staff and loyal customers are the reason behind their success. Read their story to find out more about how they created brand Toit.

2. Windmill Craftworks

Founder Ajay Nagarajan believes ‘good food and drink should give you goosebumps.’ With their motto: confident, friendly and attentive, Windmill Craftworks has used technology and gastronomy to tingle their customers’ taste buds. It’s essentially a massive cozy living room with the shelves running along the walls adorned with books of every genre; a stage at one end lights up every few days with the performances of world-class jazz bands. Windmills Craftworks, located in Whitefield in Bangalore, is crafted to be a peaceful place where one can relax, and enjoy the finer things in life

3. Cerana Beverages

Cerana Beverages, India’s first and leading craft beer company in New Delhi, proved that brew houses are an extremely viable business model. In mid 2014, they raised their first round of funding and early 2015 raised a $10 million round from global investors. The funding was used to launch ‘Biru’- the first Indian craft beer brand and to sell its proprietary draft countrywide.

4. The Pint Room

Pradeep Gidwani is a force to beckon with in the world of beer in India. After having brought/introduced drinks such as Red Bull, Foster’s, Tuborg and Carlsberg in India, you would think he has done it all. Gidwani, a serial entrepreneur, proudly calls The Pint Room his sixth entrepreneurial outing. Pradeep started The Pint Room in 2011 in Bangalore and is trying to create a beer drinking culture modeled on the lines of the coffee drinking culture that Café Coffee Day help build here. Today, the Indian landscape is rife with a number of café chains, including Starbucks, which is the latest entrant into the space. The Pint Room wants to provide an ambience, look and feel to customers similar to that in a café to customers walking into any of their outlets. The only difference being the beverage they serve to the consumer – beer. The Pint Room today offers a large variety of Indian, international and niche beers to customers at their outlets.