Ankur Jain is the founder and CEO of Bira 91, a premium beer company. It makes craft beer, the first Indian company to do so successfully. The company is backed by several venture capitalists and has a cult following among millennials. Its Mysuru brewery has become India's first carbon neutral brewery. The company had made a working group called project net zero to achieve the feat.
Bira, launched in 2015, raised 70 million dollars last year. They raised an additional 10 million dollars from MUFG Bank The company has also acquired the beer cafe. The company's estimated valuation in 2021 was 600 million dollars, which is around Rs 4925 crore. The company is racing towards the unicorn mark, which is around 1 billion dollars. Ankur Jain did all this in a few years. However, his entrepreneurial journey began years ago.
Jain, a Delhi-lad, moved to the United States in 1998 to study engineering. He completed computer engineering from the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2002. He launched a healthcare startup that he sold off four years later for an undisclosed amount. Two years later, he again embarked upon this journey. He opened a beer distribution company. He would import 30 types of beer that didn't exist in India at that time. He learnt that the Indian youth wants wheat beer and lighter flavours. He found a huge demand supply gap in India and decided to venture into the market. His family wasn't completely onboard the decision to start afresh.
He recently said in an interview that his father didn't speak with him for five years when he told him about his business. However, this allowed him to do his thing. He said he would have remained a techie all his life had this incident not happened. Now, he is a market disruptor.
In 2015, Bira was imported from Belgium. They, however, jumped on the Make in India band wagon and now have plants in MP and Nagpur that do all the production for them. The brand is now launched in the United States as well.
He said the lack of choice in the beer market made him the entrepreneur he is now.
Before becoming an entrepreneur, he also worked for Motorola.
He was born in Delhi. His father is an architect and mother an interior designer.
The company has been growing at a rate of 2x. In FY 2021, the company's revenue was Rs 430 crore.
Its 2022 revenue is Rs 712.8 crore in India and Rs 6 crore from US and Singapore.
