As part of Bacardi India’s big bet on India’s whisky market, the alcohol beverage maker has forayed into the Indian-made whisky segment with the launch of ‘Legacy’, which it calls the company’s first-ever made-in-India whisky.
Legacy will be launched in three sizes and it has first been introduced in Maharashtra, Telangana and Uttar Pradesh. After the first phase of the launch, the product will expand its presence across Karnataka, Delhi, Punjab, Odisha, West Bengal, and Rajasthan.
Bacardi, which is mainly known for its white rum variants in India currently sells two scotch whisky brands Dewar's & William Lawsons in India after bringing its global whisky portfolio to India a little over four years ago. Even though it currently has only about 5 percent market share in India’s scotch whisky market, the company has been focusing a lot on growing this portfolio in the past four years, which is currently growing by over 50 percent.
The foray into India-made whisky is expected to strengthen its presence further in a market currently dominated by Diageo and Pernod Ricard. This foray is also followed by a foray into the brown spirits segment with Good Man brandy earlier this year.
Bacardi says Legacy has been crafted with select Indian grains and is currently the only premium Indian whisky, in the brand’s stable. It has a blend that combines Indian and Scottish malts with Indian grains.
India is one of the fastest-growing alcoholic beverage markets globally, with an estimated market size of $52.5 billion in 2020. The market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.8 percent between 2020 and 2023, according to ICRIER.
According to IWSR drinks market analysis, India is the sixth biggest global destination for Scotch whisky with nearly one in every two bottles of whisky bought around the world sold in India. Furthermore, Indian-made whisky brands have also been gaining global prominence with seven of the top ten global whisky brands currently being Indian.
“BACARDÍ holds an undisputed ‘Legacy’ in the white-spirits segment in India. Now, we aim to win big in the high-growth Indian-made whisky category as well. India presents an exciting growth opportunity for us, as it is the #1 market globally for whisky, and our first-ever ‘made-in-India’ whisky, Legacy, will enable us to scale operations nationally as we continue to grow the brand manifold by the end of this decade,” Sanjit Singh Randhawa, Managing Director, BACARDÍ India said in a statement.
The company further added that India is one of the fastest growing markets for BACARDÍ globally, and the organisation is rapidly investing behind its strategic and ambitious vision for the market.
It is not just Bacardi that is betting big on India’s Whisky market. The world’s largest brewer AB InBev is also set to foray into whisky, gin and ready-to-drink beverage segments in India this year. In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Kartikeya Sharma, President, India & South East Asia, AB InBev said that it will announce a whisky brand over the next 3-4 months in the premium and Premium+ segment, which it will first launch in Goa, followed by Maharashtra, then markets like Karnataka, Haryana, UP, etc.
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