Seltzer: The new kid on the block competing with beer

For Roshni Ravi Prasad, a 25-year-old stem-cell biologist based in Bengaluru, it wasn’t uncommon to let her hair down on the weekends and have a pint of beer. Recently, she discovered hard seltzer—an alcoholic drink that combines alcohol with flavoured carbonated water—and has never looked back. 

Hard seltzer found its popularity around the time when the world was just getting out of the pandemic. As people grew more health conscious, so did their drinking habits. Both drinkers looking to cut out alcohol altogether and those looking for drinks with a lower calorific ratio found a sweet deal in hard seltzer. 

“I like this because it just feels more refreshing to taste and plus you get them in multiple flavours like strawberry and mango, without the bitter aftertaste of beer,” Prasad, a regular consumer of hard seltzers, tells YS Life. 

For A, another seltzer drinker based in Doncaster, UK, who regularly sipped on a dark fruit cider, seltzer is a great alternative since it has fewer calories and lower alcohol content, making it easy to drink as many pints as she wants.

“I’ll have to admit it grew on me, but once it did, I always picked seltzer over a pint,” she says. 

As a category, hard seltzer is estimated to be an almost $14.5 billion industry globally by 2027, growing at a compounded annual growth rate of 16%, according to Grand View Research. 

In the last three years, India has seen a number of entrants in the space, all vying for the attention of the country's young and growing drinking population. 

Setting up a hard seltzer brand in India 

Anish Reddy, Founder of Pursue Hard Seltzer, first chanced upon hard seltzers in Miami, US. It was a preferred drink of choice for his friends, even over wine.

“We found it to be lighter… and it’s a lot more fun and easy to drink,” he says.

When Reddy returned to India, it struck him that there really wasn’t a large hard seltzer brand in India, so to speak.

“When I started out with figuring out Pursue in India, there really weren’t any seltzer brands, and there were two prominent ones in the US—White Claw being one of them,” he says. “So our competition, as we saw it, was really just international players.”  

And while the idea was in place, Pursue also faced obstacles in setting up a production unit. Since making hard seltzers involves carbonation, it required setting up a mechanism in-house or outsourcing manufacturing to outside of India. While Reddy’s family who was involved in the alcohol business was able to lend a hand, the business still needed adjustments.

“We did not want to outsource, so we had to set up a carbonation facility within our factory, with its own air conditioning units… the process took nearly 18 months to set up, after which we were able to launch the brand in Goa in 2021… but nationally we were able to be in most major cities only by August 2022,” says Reddy. 

Then comes the issue of categorisation. Since seltzers aren’t exactly spirits and not exactly beer, it can be hard to figure out the category it falls into under the existing excise regulations.

“Even before our official launch, we spent about six months trying to tell the government what a seltzer is,” quips Vinesha Tumati, Brand Manager at Hyderabad-based Spyk Hard Seltzer.

Since Spyk brews its seltzer—a process that involves fermentation of sugars and can take up to 10 days a batch—unlike some other competitors, the company was even suggested it add beer to the label but refused since it did not have any of the same ingredients like hops and barley.

“As of now, no excise department in any state of India recognises hard seltzer as a separate category of alcohol,” says Tumati. 

Better than beer?

Hard seltzer, globally, is seen as an alternative to beer as it offers the option of various flavours without the bitter aftertaste of beer.  

“A lot of our drinkers have also told us that they prefer IST because it’s lighter than a beer and packs the same amount of buzz,” says Krupa Shah, Founder of IST Hard Seltzer. 

Seltzer is also seen as the preferred option for those looking to cut back on calories. The refreshing flavours are also an attractive feature. However, for seltzer makers, this presents a unique challenge as they have to make these flavours palatable for Indians.

“When we formulated our lemon flavour, we kept in mind the intricacies of the Indian palette. So, if you try our lemon seltzer you will find it has the same profile of a nimbu paani,” notes Shah.

“We also worked with some of the country’s top mixologists to come up with flavour pairings that really work,” says Reddy of Pursue. 

Its popularity is also evident in stores. Anil K, an assistant store manager at Sling, a popular chain of liquor stores in Bengaluru, says, “People are actually coming in and asking for seltzer.” 

A long way to go

With hard seltzer new to India, brands are doing everything they can—from being informative about the product to putting it front and centre at events and getting people to try the drink.

“We do believe that the market (drinkers) will eventually adopt us because even when people have tried Pursue, they always come back for seconds,” says Reddy. 

The popularity of hard seltzers hasn’t escaped the purview of larger beer-forward brands either. In February this year, Bira, which is known for its speciality craft beers, launched its own line of hard seltzers in a bid to compete with brands in the space. 

Nonetheless, hard seltzers aren’t likely to take away from the beer market anytime soon.

“Even though sales are high, it is definitely not selling more than beer,” says Anil. 

For now, the seltzer players are keeping a soft target on beer and Breezer drinkers.

“In Karnataka and Telangana alone, Breezer sells one-and-a-half lakh cases a month. That’s a huge market, and so just trying to convert that (those drinkers) to hard seltzer, that is the game,” says Vamsi Krishna, Co-founder of Spyk Hard Seltzer. 

Hard seltzer, though, will continue to find its drinkers among the health-conscious youth, wooing them with its fruity flavours and low-calorie promise.

Cover image by Nihar Apte.

(This story is updated to correct the last name of a person quoted in the story.)