It was Mahatma Gandhi who saved the new Indian liquor story from being stillborn.
Yes! When the Jagdales, who launched the first ‘Indian single malt whisky’, had a tough decision to make—the whisky, called Amrut, had not really taken off and the company was bleeding money—Bapu’s spirit came to their rescue.
While the father, Neelakanta, wanted to give up and cut losses, son Rakshit wanted to give it another shot. Unable to reach a consensus, they took a walk from their hotel in London to the nearby Tavistock Square and sat down in front of the bronze statue of Gandhi.
“It came to me: our entire history would have been different if Gandhi, too, had gone back on what he had resolved to do,” Neelakanta had recounted later in an interview. “There I was thinking small, worried about losing a few crores, while there was this big opportunity to establish an Indian whisky brand abroad and make the country proud. What I learnt, looking at Gandhi ji, was about hope and inspiration.”
All that, and some skilful innovation and deft marketing, not only made Amrut a marquee brand but has also given Indian alcohol a leg up in the global alcoholic beverage industry (alcobev) space.
The success of the Indian single malts—with brands like Paul John, Rampur and Indri that followed Amrut—is only one part of the story. There is a whole lot of craft innovation, from gin to indigenous liquors, happening. And the world is taking note.
How’s the josh?
The josh is indeed high. On the one hand, premiumisation has seen more and more Indians going for better quality liquor. This has pushed India’s domestic alcohol market to a valuation of Rs3.25 lakh crore in 2025, as per a study by Technopak, with a yearly growth of about 10 per cent. Ten of the 30 fastest-growing liquor brands in the world are Indian. Diageo’s McDowell’s No.1 is the largest-selling whisky in the world. More excitingly, a plethora of Indian brands has gone global in recent years, spawning an export market that is growing at 20 to 26 per cent.
It is a dramatic shift from the stereotype of Indian liquor being cheap and low-quality. More and more craft ‘Indian’ brands are being launched, and are being lapped up by discerning urban Indians.
The world, too, can’t have enough of it. Indri, a single malt whisky distilled in the namesake village in Haryana, was adjudged the ‘World’s Best Whisky’ twice. Gianchand, from Jammu’s DeVANS, won International Whisky of the Year and Grand Gold at Meininger’s International Spirits Award. Five Indian brands won top honours at the Whiskies of the World awards this year—something unimaginable a few years ago!
Take the case of Nikita, who lives in Delhi and used to look forward to picking up liquor from the duty-free on her way back from visiting her brother in Singapore. “He is now asking me to pick up the new Indian brands for him when I go visiting!” she said.
The ‘Distilled and Bottled in India’ tag is finding takers all over the world. Radico Khaitan exports brands like Rampur, its single malt, and craft gin Jaisalmer to more than 100 countries. Grover’s wines are now being served even in Paris restaurants. “Because of its unique terroir and climate India offers a very different malt experience. Vast temperature variation, especially in north India, not only ensures that malt matures at an aggressive pace, but also imparts unique flavours, without compromising on complexity or balance,” said Sanjeev Banga, president (international business), Radico Khaitan. Rampur single malt is named after the town in Uttar Pradesh the company started distilling in 1943.
“Indian single malts are now meeting and exceeding the global benchmarks of quality,” said Diego Bianchi, vice president, global hubs, Sazerac. “Over the past decade, the category has evolved remarkably to become the fastest-growing spirits segment in the world.”
It isn’t just whisky. Jin Jiji Indian dry gin, distilled in Uttarakhand, received a gold medal at the London Spirits Competition this year, while Cherrapunji gin—which uses purified monsoon water from Cherrapunji and Mawsynram in Meghalaya—won a double gold at the SIP Awards 2025. Bandarful, a cold brew coffee liqueur crafted from Chikmagalur coffee and Himalayan spring water, was crowned the world’s ‘best liqueur’ at the 2025 USA Spirits Ratings.
What was once a trickle—an Amrut here or a Paul John there—has now become a torrent. Indian liquor exports crossed Rs3,000 crore last year. Estimates are that they will cross $1 billion (around Rs9,000 crore) a year before this decade is through.
The churning of the ocean
When the Jagdales decided to make Amrut, the liquor scene in India was very different. Stifling laws and regulations had stunted the industry, not to mention a few entrenched players with political patronage who did not make the entry of a startup easy. This meant that the industry remained shackled, with unremarkable products aimed at the mass market. With alcohol governed as a state subject, manufacturers had to navigate a maze of laws as they moved from state to state.
Even the products were questionable. A European trade official once wondered how India could ask for more market access for whisky in trade negotiations when Indian whiskies should actually be classified as ‘rum’ because they use molasses (a byproduct of sugarcane refining) instead of grains.
Into that quagmire entered the Jagdales, closely followed by Paul John with his eponymous single malt. In both cases, curiosity and aspiration paved the way.
John, son of a Karnataka politician and a fan of the single malt scotch Glenmorangie, made many trips to Scotland to figure out why the best whisky could only be made in Scotland. “In fact, I brought water back from there and got it tested over here. And I realised that there’s no rocket science in it. India has pretty much everything that we need to make good quality single malts,” he said. “It took me three years. I had no experience. We were just shooting in the dark.”
But John, just like the Jagdales, realised early on that creating quality alcohol was one thing, and making it break through the clutter was another. Amrut and Paul John, as well as the likes of Indri, hit upon a two-pronged marketing strategy. One: launch internationally first. Second: craft a marketing strategy that highlights the product’s ‘exotic’ Indianness.
Amrut was launched in the UK in 2004. But even after three years, when the Jagdales took their walk to the Gandhi statue, it had failed to make a dent in the market. But with a renewed marketing strategy—which went to town talking about being made out of grains grown at the foothills of the Himalayas to being aged in unique tropical conditions—it started getting attention.
The turning point, not just for Amrut but for the whole industry, came in 2009 when Amrut was recognised by Malt Maniacs and then by the prestigious Whisky Bible of Jim Murray, which adjudged Amrut Fusion as the third best in the world.
While John now has about 300 international awards on his mantlepiece, Indri, created by the Sharmas of Piccadily Agro, has scored ‘World’s Best Whisky’ more than once for its ‘Diwali Edition’. Piccadily has long been a wholesale manufacturer and distributor for many liquor brands before it launched its own single malt from the banks of the Yamuna canal in a small village in Haryana.
“The award is what really blew things open for them,” said Vikram Achanta, founder & CEO of Tulleeho, an alcobev consultancy. “They were able to make that viral messaging so strong about the award that it worked brilliantly from a social media, PR and news media perspective. Everybody started saying ‘I want to drink Indri’, and since the award-winning Diwali Edition was a limited edition, the demand percolated down to the rest of the product portfolio.”
Storied success
The sudden transformation of India’s alcobev industry is not just the case of a few brands winning awards. Along with the manufacturers’ efforts, there has been a sea change in society.
“Indians all over the world are waking up. And we don’t have the colonial hangover the last generation had,” said Praveen Kumar Malviya, CEO of Piccadily Agro, the parent company of Indri. “It starts with not looking down upon yourself.”
Add to that the growth in disposable income, exposure to the world, and the desire for new experiences, and the stage was set.
The ‘new age’ brands not only ensured that they were making a world-class product, but also got the right background story in place. That is why, for each of these brands, you will find reference to their unique ‘Indianness’, from Himalayan spring water, botanicals, monsoon rainwater from Cherrapunji, or even the aridness of Rajasthan that adds flavour. Cazulo feni from Goa, for instance, is aged in casks made of local Miri hardwood underwater, and it uses clay condensers, not copper.
“You need that powerful original story, and while everybody has got a story, the India story, particularly of its indigenous spirits, is powerful. No one else has it,” said Hansel Vaz, who founded Cazulo craft feni and was part of the move to get the feni-making process certified so as to qualify for the heritage tag.
Many feel that India’s indigenous brews are just waiting to be rediscovered. Some are even going beyond. Restaurateur Rakshit Dhariwal hit upon the idea of launching Asia’s first agave-based drink, called Maya Pistola Agavepura, when he realised during the lockdown that the fastest-moving categories after beer and wine were agave spirits.
“I started thinking, agave has been growing in India for 300 years. Why is it that we don’t have a premium agave spirit offering in India? And that’s how I started working on it,” said Dhariwal. Last year, Diageo came knocking and took a stake in the startup.
The powers-that-be take note
It has helped that the government, too, has taken note of the good press Indian alcobev has been getting. FSSAI has come out with standards a whisky has to meet to be called an ‘Indian single malt’, while the Madhya Pradesh government took the initiative to decriminalise the making of mahua. Made from a local wild flower, it was banned by the British back in the 19th century.
Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal expressed his pleasant surprise at the rise of Indian spirits when he told Parliament in February that a Swiss minister told him there was an Indian whisky which was world-famous and almost impossible to get on the shelves in Europe. He said the Swiss leader told him that it was “tastier” than the whiskies made by other countries.
The ecosystem, too, has taken shape, with the club/pub culture of nights-out giving way to cocktail bars, lounges and speakeasies. Whisky clubs, wine societies and cocktail weeks have mushroomed in all big cities. The focus everywhere, as lifestyle influencer Pallavi ‘Moda Ninja’ Singh put it, was “literally about the cocktail, tasting and experiencing them, and no longer about clubbing and getting drunk.”
Jeet Rana, who recently co-founded a cocktail bar in the national capital called Barbet & Pals, concurs, “We are proud that we have some spirits that are as great as some of the best international brands and we are able to use them to make cocktails. Consumers coming in are actually asking for these particular Indian brands.”
The world is not enough
Even global alcohol biggies like Diageo and Pernod Ricard are launching premium Indian whiskies for the international market. Pernod’s Longitude 77, named after the east meridian that passes through India, is manufactured in Nashik, Maharashtra. Diageo’s single malt Godawan is made in Rajasthan.
“Think good whisky, you think of Scotland, Japan; you think pristine air and clean water and great temperature. Rajasthan is everything but that—very arid, dry air, and temperatures that go as high as 50 degrees on one end and as low as six to eight degrees on the other. A harsh land from which nobody would imagine a great whisky could come,” said Diageo’s chief innovation officer Vikram Damodaran, encapsulating the entire new-age Indian whisky journey into one unique enterprise—craftsmanship.
Diageo has gone further, launching a platform called The Good Crafts Company, which is an ‘R&D lab for alcobev’. It is also investing in startups. One of the companies it acquired was Nao Spirits, a startup which launched Indian gins Greater Than and Hapusa.
Other investors, too, hope to get a high in this sunrise sector. Shah Rukh Khan and son Aryan recently partnered with Radico Khaitan and Zerodha’s Nikhil Kamath to launch a luxury tequila. Others include Ajay Devgn (the GlenJourneys single malt), Sanjay Dutt (the Glenwalk blended scotch), Vivek Oberoi (stake in a Scottish company that makes tea-infused gin) and Rana Daggubati with Anirudh Ravichander (Loca Loka tequila).
Work in progress
With all the action, the Indian alcobev industry faces two big challenges. One is over-regulation, with rules varying from state to state adding to the complexity. India’s dated notions of culture and puritanism mean most state governments find simplifying liquor laws a hot potato better left untouched.
The other is the tough task of establishing Indian alcobev on the global stage as a force. While the recent awards and export spurt are a good start, the road ahead is long and arduous. Take, for instance, Japan. Its spirits had to really work at it for several decades before getting international acceptance as a category at par with Scotch whiskies.
India has its task cut out. “It is a matter of time, but it is also a matter of concentrated brand building,” said Damodaran of Diageo. “Building something like this of value requires time.”
Perception is another wall to be surmounted, sip by sip. Pramod Mohandas, who works in a luxury resort in the UAE, says Indian premium spirits have already reached a point of dominance in places like Dubai. “It’s not just NRIs who are lapping it up. I see colleagues at work and friends on social media chatting about the rise of Indian alcobev all the time. My Irish friends love them, and I have seen Russian tourists trying them out and then buying them as presents when they go back. It’s only the Brits and Scots who have a problem in accepting the rise of Indian spirits,” he said.
It doesn’t fluster Himanshu Ashar much. The global brand ambassador of Paul John keeps pitching the next symbolic move for Indian alcobev to everyone he meets at tasting sessions. “The English say ‘cheers’, while the Spanish say ‘salud’,” he said. “Here in India, I think it’s time we came up with our own custom. It’s time we started saying ‘Jai Ho!’ instead of cheers.”