Bangalore's Amrut Distilleries hHigh on success

Bangalore-based Amrut Distilleries has been around for more than 60 years. Of late, the group has been basking in limelight, thanks to its highly acclaimed single malt, Amrut Fusion, recently judged the third finest whisky in the world.

“Over the years we have gone through the hard process of learning and experimenting over and over again, that’s how we’ve built our distilleries in pieces,” says Neelakanta Rao R Jagdale, managing director of Amrut Distilleries.

“You cannot churn out Olympic athlete by the dozens,” he adds, “Producing an athlete like PT Usha doesn’t happen overnight.”

Established by JN Radhakrishna Rao Jagdale in 1948, Amrut Distilleries today ranks among the top 10 distilleries in the country. Hailing from a pharmaceutical background, JNR started off in 1947, floating a company called Amrut Laboratories.

Post-independence and with the liberalisation of licensing laws, he sensed an opportunity in the liquor market, particularly with distillery licences becoming more readily available. “This is when he diversified into Amrut Distilleries, while also continuing with a division in the pharma industry,” recollects Jagdale. Neelakanta Rao joined his father in the business in 1972. Around this time, they had just started distilling brandy.

Realising the need to get into the premium segment in the 1970s, most distillers in the country migrated from using flavour-based whisky and brandy to natural malt whisky and grape brandy in their blends. “To make a good grape brandy, one requires the use of a certain percentage of natural ingredients. You need to use good-quality grape, ferment, distill and age it,” explains Jagdale.

The spread of vineyards around Bangalore has helped the company source high-quality grapes for its brandy. The disposable income of the people was improving at the time, thus increasing the demand and consumption of higher quality liquor.

Tough road
The company has had its fair share of struggles. Until the 1990s, most of the technology used for distillation was homegrown, largely because of the heavy restrictions in India.

“The alcoholic beverages industry was not a priority in the country,” explains Jagdale. “Although we received help to a certain extent from the Central Food Technological Research Institute (CFTRI), we had to find our own ways to learn about improved distilling methods.”

In the alcohol industry, the quality of the product is measured by the maturity of the alcohol. The longer it is left to age under proper conditions, the better the premium it fetches. “Over the years we have made a lot of investments in sourcing good quality containers, like our oak barrels. We understand the importance and complex chemistry of maturation process, thanks to our chemists’ background,” he said.

After liberalisation in the 1990s the industry got some respite, giving distillers better access to technology. Around that time, duties were reduced moderately, to about 35% on imports.
Winning accolades

Realising his distilleries had a fairly good produce of aqua vitae—as the drink is popularly known—Jagdale asked his son, who was pursuing an MBA in the UK at the time, to test the markets there for an India-made single malt, with intensive research as part of his thesis. The results were more than encouraging.

“We reached the stage where we were able to age our malt to the level that met international requirements in the mid-1990s,” said Jagdale, “It was also important that we had enough quantity to put our product out in the market.”

Having set aside a portion of their finest whisky blends for ageing in 2000, the group launched its piece de resistance, Amrut Indian Single Malt, in Glasgow in 2004.

So, why then did they prefer to showcase their best produce on foreign shores, and not test the waters on home ground first?.
“We were confident of our single malt. From a marketing perspective, we thought if our product had to pass the test, why not do so in the toughest location. Scotland is the home of Scotch. If they acknowledge our single malt, then that’s good enough for me,” replies Jagdale.

The company developed these products specifically with an eye on the Western markets. He was also keen that Amrut Fusion should be known as an Indian single malt. “We did not want to pass it off as Scotch whisky, which it isn’t. The USP of Fusion was its Indian origin. That is another reason we never seriously considered giving it a foreign name,” he said.

Looking ahead
Spearheaded by Neelkanta Rao Jagdale—along with third-generation leaders, Rakshit Jagdale and Trivikram Nikkam—the group aims to clock-in a turnover of ` 200 crore this year, up from `184 crore last fiscal. Although the company has a presence in 22 countries across the globe, a modest 3-4% of revenues comes from overseas sales.

“Canada, US and Europe countries are the most promising markets with tremendous growth prospects for us,” says Jagdale. While Amrut Fusion and Portonora are the most popular among the portfolio, a majority of Amrut Distilleries revenues comes from the semi-premium segment comprising whisky, brandy and rum. The group plans to launch new variants of its bestsellers for the Indian market. At present, Fusion and Indian Single Malt are available only at select retailers in Bangalore.