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BrewDog, the UK’s largest craft beer model, has closed its two flagship Mumbai bars, in a blow to its plans to scale up within the nation and faucet the rising variety of drinkers.
The BrewDog bar in Bandra West, a suburb that’s dwelling to many Bollywood stars and is thought for its liberal nightlife, in addition to its bar within the workplace district of Decrease Parel, have been closed because the summer season.
The corporate’s logos have additionally been taken down from the locked-up properties, in accordance with checks by the Monetary Occasions. BrewDog now has solely two bars open in India, having first arrange there in 2021.
Pratekk Chturvedi, a director of Aloha Worldwide Brewpub which operates the BrewDog India franchise, informed the FT that the landlords had wished the bars to shut and that the franchise operator had filed authorized circumstances to reclaim “enterprise losses that we face”. BrewDog declined to remark.
Even earlier than the closures, BrewDog had struggled with acquiring constant beer provides in India’s monetary capital. Chturvedi, who can also be chief working officer of BrewDog India, mentioned that the brewer had additionally confronted points with the division that regulates and taxes alcohol in Mumbai’s dwelling state of Maharashtra.
“Mumbai was an especially necessary marketplace for us, it’s floor zero, it’s the place we started,” Chturvedi mentioned. “I’m pretty sure that within the coming time, perhaps within the subsequent, say, three to 4 quarters, we are going to discover a new location and begin up in [Mumbai] once more.”
BrewDog’s Mumbai setback illustrates the difficulties confronted by alcoholic drinks corporations in India, at the same time as ingesting has turn into extra acceptable in a rustic the place it has sometimes been frowned upon and consumption closely regulated.
In April, a brewery owned by Heineken’s Indian enterprise, United Breweries — which is the nation’s largest beermaker and the producer of Kingfisher lager — was raided by authorities within the southern state of Karnataka.
United Breweries’ chief govt Vivek Gupta informed the FT that “extreme” regulatory motion and the patchwork of various guidelines throughout India’s states and territories, a few of which prohibit the sale of alcohol, had been hurting gross sales in a “precedence market”.
The closures are additionally a setback to BrewDog’s plans for abroad enlargement. Solely final 12 months, it introduced plans to open 100 bars in India over the following decade.
Chturvedi mentioned the Mumbai closures had been solely a blip in BrewDog’s India plans. He added that the native franchise was operationally worthwhile and would give attention to the nation’s north the place it had two bars within the cities of Gurugram and Amritsar.
“We’re aggressive enlargement within the coming 12 months . . . we’re one opening each quarter,” Chturvedi mentioned, including {that a} new bar would open in Chandigarh within the coming weeks.
“India is a booming craft beer market,” he mentioned. “It’s a very profitable, very worthwhile market.”
James Watt, BrewDog’s founder, stepped down as chief govt in Might after he was accused of overseeing a “poisonous” office tradition. In its most up-to-date outcomes, the corporate reported an virtually doubling of losses to £59.2mn in 2023.
