Anushruti Singh
“The Indian liquor industry is much older than what it is widely perceived to be. It won’t be factually inappropriate to state that India was traditionally a light beer market,” says Prem Dewan, Chairman and Managing Director of DeVANS Modern Breweries Ltd, which has been serving some of India’s finest liquors for six decades.
Dewan took over the reins of the company in 1982 and expanded it from one brewery unit to four.
Way back in 1855, a beer named Golden Eagle was introduced by the country’s first brewery in Solan. Over the years, especially post partition, some notable players emerged in the industry such as United Breweries in Karnataka and Kalyani in West Bengal, but the market remained pretty stagnant for a long period. It was only after 1967 when the real growth of liquor, particularly beer, took off in India.
“This period incidentally coincides with the inception of our first brewery in Jammu as well,” Dewan says while talking about how beer culture grew in India.
Gradually, the Indian market witnessed a remarkable shift towards strong beers, with the advent of brands such as Godfather, Rajdhani, Thunderbolt, etc. As of today, even as several multinational brewers continue to vie for the premium lager segment, strong lagers still remain the hot favourite amongst consumers.
“DeVANS has been supplying fine quality malt spirit for blending purposes to different spirit manufacturers across India for more than three decades. While in the single malt category, GianChand is our most notable recent addition, and has been termed as the finest Indian single malt nosed in a long time by acclaimed whisky critic, Jim Murray,” Dewan tells us.
Actually, the credit for being the pioneer Indian brand in the single malt category goes to Amrut Distilleries, which came out with the first Indian single malt around 25 years ago and subsequently went on to receive an excellent response in Scotland. Since then, the Indian market has been flooded with a plethora of excellent Indian single malt brands manufactured by Amrut, Paul John and Radico Khaitan. DeVANS has recently entered this category as well.
Story behind clear, golden and strong lager
It was in1961, when spirit bottles from DeVANS Modern Breweries Ltd, first saw the light of day. Dewan Gian Chand, a pioneering industrialist from Jammu and Kashmir, founded the brewery. In its early years, the company was a spirit bottling plant, but it has since evolved to become one of the country’s top manufacturers of malt spirits and beers.
Currently, the company boasts an award-winning product line and is a leading malt spirit provider to numerous countries. However, the thing that makes DeVANS stand out from the crowd is its strong beer Godfather, which is India’s strongest beer to date.
Yes, DeVANS is the only brewery brand to manufacture a beer with 8 per cent alcohol in it, which is the maximum limit allowed for beers in the country. Godfather’s origin has a chequered history, though.
It was in 1983 that DeVANS became the first Indian brewery to brew strong beer. They named it RAJGURU.
“The journey of Godfather goes back nearly four decades, when DeVANS introduced a beer named RAJGURU, which carried the original mascot illustration that you see today on the Godfather packaging,” Dewan reminisces.
However, the beer soon ran into trademark issues with GURU, a brand launched during the same period by Mohan Goldwater Breweries. The case went up to the Supreme Court and DeVANS successfully defended its trademark.
But the company cautiously decided to rename the brand, says Dewan.
“Thereafter in 1984, we rechristened the brand as GODFATHER, which not just sounded better but also went more aptly with our mascot. Moreover, the word ‘Godfather’ was somewhat synonymous with the original name RAJGURU. With a strong personality and exclusive flavour, it soon became a hot favourite among beer lovers, and over the years it has achieved an iconic status,” he recounts.
Though old, it’s still the hot favourite
According to Dewan, one of the reasons behind the popularity of their flagship beer Godfather is the brand’s dedication to quality.
“While there certainly are diverse factors for the widespread acceptance and popularity of Godfather in India as well as abroad, the foremost factor is the full control that we exercise over the raw materials and the procedures, as well as the overall meticulousness of our entire process,” he points out.
Even as Godfather Legendary remains a sought-after strong beer, DeVANS has diversified the Godfather portfolio with Godfather Super 8, which is the strongest beer in India with the maximum permissible alcohol limit of 8 per cent in it.
“Godfather is most popular in the northern and eastern parts of the country and is also exported to various international markets such as Japan, the US, Australia, and New Zealand, among others,” he adds.
Growing competition in the field
Dewan feels that the competition in this field is growing exponentially. “However, at the same time, consistent innovation and meeting the demands of our end consumers have been the driving forces for us since our inception,” he says.
Lauded and recognized as an iconic domestic brand, DeVANS holds around 3 per cent of the market share in the liquor market of the country.
Along with playing a pioneering role in creating a strong beer market in India, DeVANS also understood the intrinsic need of the industry and began manufacturing premium quality malt spirit to be used for blending purposes by manufacturers of alcoholic beverages across the country.
“We diversified our product portfolio with some unique offerings for the Indian consumers. We launched Six Fields Blanche, a Belgian style white beer with 4.7 per cent alcohol followed by Six Fields Cult with 6 per cent alcohol, which is the only Belgian style white strong wheat beer in India. This beer won the silver medal in the DubbleWit category at the Brussels Beer Challenge last year. We also launched Kotsberg Pils, which is a premium light lager, and it went on to win the gold medal at the prestigious Brussels Beer Challenge event where brands from the US, Italy, France, Germany, China and Japan were in the fray,” he elaborates.
Further accelerating their growth, DeVANS in 2022 took two major steps to strengthen its position in the market even more. In February last year, they expanded their operations to the Northeast, adding 10,000 KLs of manufacturing and bottling capacity of beer to its operations by tying up with a brewery in Namsai, Arunachal Pradesh. They also launched their first single malt whiskey, GianChand, in November last year.
“We are also focusing on enhancing our production capacity. With our own distilleries and breweries across Kotputli (Rajasthan), Jammu and Samba (J&K), along with our production tie-ups in Arunachal Pradesh and Jharkhand, we have ramped up our beer production capacity to 1,56,000 KLs. Today, we stand tall as one of the oldest and biggest manufacturers of quality malt spirits in the country with our array of award-winning beer brands and one of the finest single malts from India,” he enthuses.
Industry trends and the roadmap ahead
Alcohol consumption in India was around five billion litres in 2020 and is estimated to rise to around 6.21 billion litres by 2024 (Statista). Now, due to the rapid growth of beer culture in India, the newest trend in the industry is the premiumisation of brands.
Talking about this trend, Dewan says, “The current trend among Indian breweries is the focus on the premiumization of brands. Today, you can see a number of premium labels entering the strong as well as the light beer market. The major factor behind this is the spiralling cost of inputs, which is prompting brands to focus on premium products.”
Besides that, single malt whiskey is gaining traction too, he adds. “As far as segment specific trends are concerned, Indian single malts are increasingly making a huge mark in the Indian and global market despite the fact that the craft gin market has taken off in a big way,” he remarks.
Given its rich brewing history and keeping the new trends in mind, DeVANS is focusing on expanding its footprint. Dewan informs us that the company is looking at expanding the availability of GianChand in India along with exporting it to the international markets.
“We have other plans in the pipeline for the near future, which are about the expansion of GianChand in India and abroad. We further intend to expand our footprint into the western and southern parts of the country and increase our production through fresh tie-up arrangements in other states,” he tells us as he signs off.
