What happens when a techie starts brewing in his garage and ends up building one of India’s most iconic craft beer brands?
Just as refreshing as Geist’s beer, this episode has Narayan Manepally, CEO & Co-founder of Geist Brewing Co., chatting with Sanjay Swamy. It has all the flavours and ingredients - from sharing his journey as an Intel engineer in the U.S. to innovating and succeeding as a beer entrepreneur.
What you’ll learn:
🍺 How one batch of California Golden Ale changed everything
📜 Why Narayan brewed in Belgium and brought it back to India
📦 The science of building a cold chain for beer
🌳 How Geist Brewing Co. turned adversity into an open-air beer garden
📈 From 0 to 450+ locations without compromising on quality
Timestamps:
00:00 – Introduction
03:27 – Tech at Intel → Garage Brewing
08:09 – First Brew = The Big Idea
10:08 – “Now They Say: We Love Geist!”
12:42 – What Makes a Beer ‘Craft’?
15:00 – Brewing Abroad When India Said No
18:04 – The 600K Month & Scaling B2B
20:33 – COVID Pivot: Sell to Myself
23:47 – Cold Chain & the Science of Fresh Beer
34:03 – Advice for Founders
📌 Follow us:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/primevp
Twitter: https://twitter.com/primevp_in
Website: https://primevp.in
🔔 Subscribe for more founder-first content.
#GeistBrewingCo. #CraftBeerMovement #StartupIndia #FounderInsights #EntrepreneurMindset #RegulatoryChallenges #B2BtoB2C #FoodAndBeverageIndustry #ConsumerBranding #ScalingStartups #BootstrappingStories #COVIDPivot #BusinessOfBeer #FounderPodcast #PrimeVenturesPartnersPodcast
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
I just wanted to brew beer and open a microbrewery.
We were earning $600,000 in amonth.
Bangalore is the capital ofcraft beer in the country and
this is like a billion-dollarindustry.
The homebrewing industry ismassive, really smart engineers.
Everybody brewed beer in theirhome.
You're allowed to make 30liters of beer free without a
license, as long as you don'tsell it.
Beers are categorized into twomain buckets there are ales and
(00:22):
there are lagers.
Ales typically use topfermenting yeast.
Lager strains typically tend tostay at the bottom in order to
produce the same beer over andover and over again.
That takes skill, it takesexperience, it takes dedication.
It takes, you know, it takestech.
We have to thank Vijay Mallyaand Kingfisher.
So we said let's call it KamaSutra, because it just sound
like Kama Sutra.
It has to go from passion topersistence to profitability.
(00:44):
At the end of the day, it'sabout making somebody feel
really good when they drink aglass of beer.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Hi again, welcome to the next episode of the Prime
Venture Partners podcast.
And I have with me a friend andwhat hopefully will be a very
special episode, my dear friendfrom school.
We've had several names for him, but his official name is
Narayan and for today's show Ishall call him Narayan.
No, I'm actually going to callyou Nari.
(01:16):
I can't call you anything else.
But my dear buddy from StJoseph's Boys High School and
college and, through life, knowneach other for the better part
of 50 years Scary to say thatSeriously.
But most importantly, now he isthe star co-founder and owner
of Geist Brewery microbreweryStar.
(01:39):
Really, I have to say somethingpolite, and we're going to talk
here a little bit about hisjourney from a little kid that I
knew him to becoming anengineer, working overseas,
coming back to India andeventually starting up what for
(02:00):
many years was his passionproject and converting it into a
business Guy's Brewery and Nadi.
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Our audience here are largely tech entrepreneurs, so
we will bring in a little bit ofhow tech is involved in the
making of beer and the managingof the business.
So maybe we can start a littlebit with you telling us about
your early days and slowly, overa period of time, you know
where you studied, where youworked, and we'll come down to
(02:30):
the the beer part later on yeah,so I left to go to the us in 89
.
Tell us from school oh, fromschool.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
So I'm born in mysore , uh, brought up in bangalore.
That's when I met you at school, at St Joseph's Boys' High
School, which feels like aneternity now, by the way.
It feels like just the otherday, if you ask me Easy for you
to say Sorry, I'm sweating as wetalk because it's kind of warm
(03:02):
today, but anyway, perfect timefor a beer, absolutely so.
After school I went to BMS.
I did my PUC at St Joseph's.
Went to BMS because I flunkedthe IIT exam.
I couldn't get in.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And then that's two of us.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Seriously, but anyway so.
And then finished BMS, headedto Virginia Tech for my master's
, but anyway so.
And then finished PMS, headedto Virginia Tech for my master's
, and there in the computerscience department was this
absolutely amazing technologycalled DBI, that stood for
(03:38):
digital video interactive.
And I was looking at thiscomputer screen and it was like
a walkthrough of a Mayan cave.
And so somebody had taken acamera and put it on their
shoulder and they had kind oftaken a picture step by step and
they had stitched thesepictures together and so you
could actually walk through thisentire cave.
And again, if you looked at thefar right you could see the
(03:58):
little ant, and if you clickedon it you could hear the ant's
chirp or the sound and thegenealogy of the ant.
It was just absolutelyfascinating stuff.
And it was that moment I decidedthat I somehow have to find a
job at this place.
And they were based inPrinceton, new Jersey.
It was an Intel department, soIntel had sponsored this
(04:20):
technology, and then it was alittle research group called PRO
, the Princeton ResearchOperation.
So I stayed with my sister, whowas not very far away from
there, sent my resume in andthen I got called for an
interview After many, many daysof trying, and then there were
five people over a whole day ofinterviews and I got hired and I
(04:45):
was just like the mostbrilliant set of people I've
worked with in my life.
Just absolutely amazing, anyway.
So I worked on a bunch ofdifferent things.
Then one day our legendary CEOat that time, a person called
Andy Groh he came in and all ofthe work that we were doing in
PRO, which is a Princetonresearch operation, was all
(05:06):
non-real-time stuff.
So you would take a video, youwould compress it with an
algorithm and then you wouldplay it back by decompressing it
on hardware.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
This is early 90s we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
This is 1991-92.
And he came in and he said what?
is all this bullshit,non-real-time stuff.
I want something in real time.
And he came in and he said whatis all this bullshit,
non-real-time stuff?
I want something in real time.
And he had this thick Hungarianaccent, just this amazing human
being, anyway.
So he told us this, gave usthis mandate and basically told
(05:37):
the team and said I want you touse as little hardware as
possible and I want you to startmoving as much of the
processing power onto the nativeprocessor on the CPU.
And so the team worked on abunch of different things, but
the algorithm guy startedworking on something called NSP,
which is native signalprocessing, taking away HOSPA
(05:58):
from a digital signal processor,which is a DI-based DSP.
And me and another guy calledPeter were given the role to
figure out what real-time stuffcan you create.
And so we came up with the ideaof a video conferencing system.
So we actually worked on thisand it worked.
It was actually fascinatingbecause you could send audio
(06:20):
video and you could share textand all the stuff that you can
do on Zoom today.
We had it working in 1993 andandy showed that at the intel
sales and marketing conferencein 1993 in front of 2 000 people
, and I remember backstage.
He comes by, he stops, he looksat me and says this had better
work.
And then he goes in straight todo the presentation and we had
(06:44):
linked IJKK, which is Intel,japan, princeton and Andy
sitting in Arizona, and itworked and he absolutely loved
it and he said, okay, we'regoing to create a real product
out of this.
And so the entire thing shiftedto the Intel Communications
Group in Portland, oregon, in1993.
I was shifted to that, to thatdivision, and started working on
(07:07):
stuff.
I mean, it's hard.
It's hard to say this nowbecause I was the only indian
guy in my group and today what?
35 of intel, maybe more, isindian.
But um, I started working onthis and then everybody in my
group again a a bunch of reallysmart engineers.
Everybody brewed beer in theirhomes, because in Oregon you're
(07:29):
allowed to make 30 liters ofbeer free, without a license, as
long as you don't sell it, andthis is like a billion-dollar
industry.
The homebrewing industry ismassive.
So I got into this thing.
I went to brew beer with my guy, with my friends, got, you know
, made a few batches of beer,fell in love with it and started
building a little brewery in mygarage and then started brewing
(07:51):
and then added every singlebell and whistle because you
know you always thought youbring in more technology, your
beer is going to be better.
Nothing can be further from thetruth.
Nothing worked, basically, butanyway put in every single bell
and whistle that you could thinkof in my home brewing system
and kept brewing beers.
But one day I remember, andthat was probably one of the
(08:11):
days, that inflection point, asthey call it, where I made the
decision to come back to India.
So my cube mate and Intel isthis cubicle desert?
Right, it's just gray cubiclesfor miles and miles and miles as
far as the eye can see.
So in my nine by nine cubicle,jeff and I were cube mates.
So Jeff said, hey, let's go.
It was a Friday afternoon, itwas bright and sunny, which is
(08:37):
rare for Oregon.
It's always raining.
So he said do you want to goget a bite to eat?
And I said, great.
So we went to Hillsborough,which is is downtown, and then,
finished on wheel, came out andwe saw this board called main
street homebrew, and so helooked at me and says you want
to go back to work?
I said, now, let's just go inthere.
So we walked in there andthere's a guy called kevin, who
(08:58):
was a phd in microbiology, whoquit his job to start a
homebrewing store because heloves craft beer and and he
gives this big gyan about youknow how do you make this and
you know what do you do.
And we were fascinated, I wasjust like completely enamored by
this whole thing.
And literally $65 later,walking out with buckets and
tubes and raw materials andstuff, and we go straight to my
house to brew a batch of beerand we brewed it.
(09:20):
Obviously we skipped work.
And then, many weeks later, jefftells me and says, hey, I've
invited a bunch of friends tocome and try our beers.
And I'm like you know.
So we had followed all thethings that kevin had told us to
do.
And then I said, man, this isgoing to be crazy.
You know, you're not going tobe able to.
We can't serve this beer, it'sgoing to taste like shit.
And he's like it's only friends, don't worry about it.
(09:42):
So I went the local store,picked up a bunch of craft beer,
put it in the refrigerator andthen, when the friends came, I
actually remember we had thisCoca-Cola keg, the Cornelius keg
, and I put this little plasticcoupler on top of the keg and I
had a little plastic tap and Ipoured the beer into the glass
and the beer was fantastic.
It was just fantastic.
(10:02):
So that was a moment I said Ihave to go back to India to do
this, because every time I cometo India and you know, when
you're in your late 20s parentsare really worried that if you
hit 30, then all the goodlooking women or the good women
will kind of disappear.
So I had this intense pressureto get married and I would come
(10:23):
every year to meet women to getmarried to.
And then every time I came backto India, the only beer
available was Kingfisher, and sowhen I made this California
Golden Ale, it was justbrilliant and I said, yeah, we
have to take it back and do this.
So that was the moment Idecided to go back to India.
What they didn't tell me wasevery subsequent batch of beer
that I brewed after that tastedlike shit.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
But anyway.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Anyway, the good thing is I came back here and
didn't quit.
And you know, when you enter anew business, you always have
this, you know this rose-coloredglasses view of the world,
saying I'm going to go changethe world and do this.
And it's excruciatinglydifficult to do business in a
regulated environment.
But we've built something.
And I think what is mostsatisfying to me, sanjay, is
(11:12):
seven years ago when somebodyasked me and said what do you do
?
And I said I work for Geist.
And they'd say what's that?
And then I have to go tolengthy tirade about craft beer
and this and this and whateverelse.
And now when I tell people Iwork for Geist, they say, oh, we
love your beer, so we've donesomething right.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Wonderful, Wonderful.
Maybe for the novices includingmyself, what are the different
types of beers that are there?
And when you use the term craftbeer, what does that mean, etc.
Maybe you can give a quick viewof the land here.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
So broadly beers are categorized into two main
buckets.
There are ales and there arelagers.
So ales typically are brewed ata higher temperature with a
different kind of yeast strainand the fermentation time is
about 14 days.
With the lager, it's brewedwith a lager strain of yeast and
(12:05):
it's brewed between 11 and 17degrees and it's brewed for a
much longer period of time,between 21 and 25 days.
So the mouthfeel, the taste arevery, very different in both
the beers.
One is a lot more rounded, alot more mouthfeel in the ales
and in the case of lagers youhave a much kind of crisper,
drier beer that you can get onyour palate.
(12:28):
Now, that said, that's the maintwo categories, right?
But today ales are being madelike lagers and lagers are being
made like ales and they use alestrains to make a lager and
lager strains to make an ale,and so the distinction between
these two categories are alsokind of becoming blurred.
But generally these two stillstand.
(12:51):
It's easier to explain to thelayman, but if you really want
to go technical about it you'llhave to say the two main
categories of beer are beersthat are fermented.
Top fermented yeast are usedand bottom fermented yeast used
for the beer.
So ales typically use topfermenting yeast.
So when they ferment they arepretty much at the top and once
(13:12):
they're done fermenting theydrop to the bottom.
Lager strains typically tend tostay at the bottom.
So if you want to classifybeers at a very general level,
it's ales and lagers.
But because the lines areblurred now between ales and
lagers, you can say the two maincategories are bottom
fermenting yeast, beers madewith bottom fermenting yeast or
beers made with top fermentingyeast.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Got it.
And then what about?
You know you talked about craftbeer versus other problems.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah.
So I guess the definition ofcraft varies from country to
country, person to person, andeverybody has an opinion of what
craft beer really is.
To me, craft beer is everythingthat the people say, which is
you know, smaller batches, morevariety, independently owned.
(14:00):
You know the owners of thebusiness have greater than 50
percent, say, in the business.
You know they don't producehuge volumes.
So there's a.
There's a, there's a cap on thenumber of liters that are
produced every year.
There's also provenance Right.
So, for example, if your beersare made from Bangalore, that's
itself one of the checkboxes forcraft, I think.
(14:21):
To me, craft is about using yourknowledge, wisdom and
experience to make somethinggreat, right, and at the end of
the day, it's about makingsomebody feel really good when
they drink a glass of beer.
And so that takes skill, ittakes experience, it takes
dedication, it takes, you know,it takes tech, uh.
(14:44):
So you have to be technicallyskilled at what you do in order
to produce the same beer overand over and over again.
Anybody can make a good batchof beer, like I found out when I
made the california golden ale,uh, and then every good batch
of beer, like I found out when Imade the California Golden Ale
and then every subsequent batchof beer was terrible, but it
takes skill and knowledge andexperience to get this product
out consistently thateffectively makes customers feel
great about it.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Wonderful.
Maybe we can talk a little bitabout that journey, where it was
this passion project tobecoming a mainstream business
of yours, journey of you know,where it was this passion
project to becoming a mainstream, uh, you know, business of
yours, right, and you sort ofbleeped over probably what was
20 years and you said, oh, andthen I started guys, and people
said what is guys trying toexplain?
But, um, just that journey andthat path for you know,
(15:27):
discovering that this is reallywhat you wanted to do as a
full-time, you know activity, uh, because you could have always,
you know, shared the, you knowthe formula with someone and,
you know, had the manufactureryou chose to actually make this
thing.
So how did that come about?
And I know, in the middle youwere also working very closely
with your father's factory inthe automotive parts space, et
(15:49):
cetera.
So a little bit about thatphase would be good to hear
about as well.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So when I came back, when I came back, I just wanted
to brew beer and open amicrobrewery, and every place
that I went to they said oh,microbrewery laws don't exist,
it's illegal to do this.
We cannot allow you to do this.
And, by the way, I went and metpoliticians and you know how it
(16:15):
is right the demands for stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Actually, I don't know how it is, but let's not go
there, so anyway.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So the thing is.
So we came back.
I wanted to open a microbrewery.
Laws didn't exist.
I had all these beer recipesthat I had made and friends of
mine and mentors of mine saidhey, you know what?
You've got these recipes.
Why don't you take theserecipes, get it made abroad and
bring it back to India?
Because you can't get a licenseto manufacture or start a
(16:45):
microbrewery.
So that's what we did.
So we took our recipes, went andmet brewers in Germany, brewers
in Belgium, and worked withthem.
And then I remember this oneparticular instance with this
Belgian brewery.
This brewer called Javier andhe kept saying Narayan, it's
(17:08):
about controlling yeast,controlling yeast.
And I couldn't quite understandwhat he meant and what he was
saying.
But I you know, I understandthe depth of what he was trying
to say now but anyway.
So we got our beers made there,brought it back to India and
not being finance guys, wedidn't realize that we were
literally wrapping 50 rupeenotes across every bottle of
(17:29):
beer that we were selling.
So we weren't making any money.
But it was actually fascinatingbecause we started working with
the excise department.
We understood how to make acost card.
We actually had our owntransportation company, so we
were selling our beers throughour own little trucks and tempos
and whatever else acrossBangalore.
(17:50):
So we understood quite a bit inthat whole process, right.
We understood excise, weunderstood warehousing, we
understood transportation.
We understood a bunch of things.
Of course we weren't making anymoney.
In parallel we keptcontinuously working with the
excise department, as did a fewothers, and the person who got
his license first for amicrobrewery was a guy called
(18:11):
Arvind Raju at Beer Club.
So he got his license and soonthereafter all the others
started opening up.
We got involved with twomicrobreweries, brewski and Big
Brewski.
Oh, in those days it was calledBrewski and Big Brewski.
And I have to tell you, thefirst time in my life I felt
like a rockstar because thisthing was wildly, wildly
successful and between these twooutlets we were earning
(18:32):
$600,000 in a month and you knowyour gross margins are 67%.
I'm like, oh my gosh, this isabsolutely amazing.
And then people kept saying atthese breweries they would say
love your beer, hate theBangalore traffic, please make
this available closer to wherewe live.
Now the structure of breweriesin Karnataka and most states in
(18:53):
the country is microbreweriesare not allowed to distribute
beyond premise.
So whatever you make, you haveto sell within your four
compound vaults.
The big breweries are makingbeers in huge volumes, right,
but they were not making thekinds of beers or they couldn't
(19:13):
make the kinds of beers thatcustomers in the urban areas
wanted to drink.
So we said, okay, so what if weset up this distribution craft
brewery is what we called itwhere we had a big brewery
license but we made smallbrewery-like beers, and that was
the first time ever in SouthIndia that anybody tried this
experiment.
So we did it and we weresupplying kegs b2b to outlets
(19:35):
across, and I remember, you know, when we started.
The first keg went out august5th 2017 and, um, it was to a
place called locals diner inkamenahalli, and I could tell
you the pride that the entireteam felt about going there and
drinking a glass of it was like,oh think, oh my gosh, this is
amazing.
Subsequently, we've grown.
We are in multiple cities.
(19:56):
Now we're in Bangalore, we'rein Telangana, we're in
Pondicherry, we're in Mahe andthis year we'll probably be in
two other states.
So we're doing this slowly.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
All right, so now you're in.
You said five states.
Four states Four states, statesand how many locations?
Speaker 1 (20:12):
again 450, 450 locations now, this one is the
original this is the og one,yeah, yes.
So this actually was a covidbaby for us, because we started
the business 2017 we'reprimarily b2b business,
supplying kegs and then Iremember we got our last payment
march 14, 2020, 2020, andeverything stopped after that
(20:36):
and we're all completelyshell-shocked because we're
completely on trade.
So, by the way, the business inbeer if you go to a restaurant
and drink at the restaurant,it's called an on-trade business
.
If you go to a wine store or ashop and you pick up your beers
and take it home, it's called anoff-trade business.
Now our business in 2017 and forthe next couple of years was
(20:57):
all on trade and this businesscompletely dried up, and so I
had no idea how deep, how far,how wide, how long this is going
to be, and the only objective Ihad was save the company and
don't fire any employees,because I just didn't feel it
was humane to let people go.
(21:17):
And you kept hearing all thesehorror stories of people just
being let go because peopledidn't want to pay, and I said
we're not going to do that right.
And so I was sitting up latenights wondering, scratching my
head.
People didn't want to pay,people didn't have any money,
money to pay true, maybe that'strue too, but you know, maybe
maybe there were some that didhave the money and didn't want
(21:38):
to pay because they won't dealwith it.
Whatever right.
But the point is we decidedwe're not going to lay anybody
off, and I'm proud to say wedidn't lay a single person off
in the entire covid period.
Uh, anyway.
So at this point in time I wasscratching my head, saying how
do we keep this business alive?
And I came up with this storyin my head that said listen, if
I can't sell to anybody, let meat least sell to myself.
(22:00):
And so I wanted these twobeautiful trees here One's a
banyan tree and one's a peopletree and I'd always had this
desire of setting up a beergarden underneath these two
trees, because that's absolutelymagnificent.
And the Karnataka government hasa policy called the refreshment
room, which effectively meansthat any brewery or winery that
(22:22):
makes product can have asampling room or a tasting room.
Uh, you know, in their premises.
What they didn't tell me wasthat they wouldn't allow you to
do it in open air, and so Ispent multiple weeks, months,
trying to convince thedepartment, saying listen, this
has to be open air, you can't dothis under a closed roof, and
so I went and worked withgovernment officials in the
(22:44):
Vidhan Sawda trying to get thisbeer garden open, and also got
permission to create thisconcept of a growler.
It's a two liter jug, you know.
I should probably get you asample.
You want to see it have?
Speaker 3 (22:58):
you seen what a growler is?
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Yeah, I'll get you one.
Can I get a sample of a growler?
So, anyway, got this permissionto allow for these growlers to
be defined by Karnataka exciseand for these growlers to be
taken away from here.
Because I was telling peoplehey, you know, if people are
going to come to the beer garden, many of them don't have the
option of going anywhere elsebecause many things are closed.
(23:21):
Allow people to take it fromhere.
And they agreed.
So we started this in 2020.
And what we also didn't realizeat that time was this is an
amazing brand building tool forus.
You know, people come, theyconnect with the brand, they see
a clean toilet, good food, goodbeer, good ambiance and they
feel more connected to thecompany.
And we had hoped that thiswould translate to better beer
(23:45):
sales when we introduced our can, and that actually turned out
to be correct.
So in 2020, we actuallyintroduced cans that would go
out to the retail stores.
Nice, so between the cans andthe kegs, we are in 250
locations.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
So this is what.
So this was your innovation.
This is the growler, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
And then we also got this modified to create a
crowler, which is a cannedgrowler, canned version of this,
and yeah so, but do you knowwhy it's called a growler?
No, okay, so in the UK whenpeople would make beer in
community breweries and take ithome, they would take it home in
(24:31):
these pails and apparently whenthey walked, you would hear a
growling sound.
That was made in the pail andthat's how it came to be called
a growler.
So that's what it is.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
So let's step back a little bit and talk about some
of the extraordinary use of techand IoT and things like that
that you sort of innovated herea bit as well, and I remember
when we talked you would talk alot about ensuring that the
temperature is perfectly doneand the transportation that you
could measure and you knewexactly where the beer was in
the delivery, etc.
Transportation and you couldmeasure and you knew exactly
where the beer was in thedelivery, et cetera.
From the logistics side of it.
Some of it is really cold chainrelated stuff, right, but you
kind of went of course, withyour tech background.
(25:14):
I guess you know you're muchmore positively inclined to
trying out some of these.
Since our audience is kind of atech audience, I'm sure they'd
love to hear you know where thetrue sort of hardware, hardware,
software and tech, iot stuffgoes into play.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
here, my guiding light has been the Arrhenius
equation.
The Arrhenius equation wascreated by a Swedish scientist
called Savante Arrhenius, who inthe 1800s, by the way, to his
credit.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
I know you did not learn this in 6th standard.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I did not learn this in 6th standard and I didn't
learn it in chemistry.
I can tell you that yeah, butthe Arrhenius equation?
Anyway.
So Arrhenius equation SavantyArrhenius was the first person
in the world in the 1800s topredict global warming and he's
the first person in the world toactually quantify the rate of
(26:11):
reaction in a liquid.
And his equation is very simple.
It says for every 10 degreerise from a base of 20 degrees,
the rate of reaction in a liquiddoubles.
So for us, we knew that if youexpose beer to heat, something
bad is going to happen.
We don't know, and still don'tknow, what actually happens
(26:33):
inside a keg or a can when it'skept warm, but it doesn't taste
as great as it does, sosomething bad is happening to
the beer.
So we came up with this,because we use this as a guiding
light.
We said, listen, let's justkeep our beers cold end to end.
So we wanted to make sure that,obviously, from the point of
(27:03):
brewing, through transportation,through dispensing at the
customer side, everything iskept cold.
What it also taught us is thatin our country the cold chain
infrastructure is not going toscale.
So if you want to build thisbusiness end-to-end cold chain
you'll remain a niche business,but our objective is to make
this beer available to as manypeople who can drink it or who
want to drink it.
So it also taught us what beerswould degrade even less.
(27:24):
So it also taught us what beerswould degrade even less right,
and how do you use tech to makesure that it is exposed to the
least amount of heat, even ifyou're not using toll chain
transportation right.
So what we did in the beginningwas the first thing we did was
we said, hey, we need to come upwith an ERP system, because
there is no beer brewing ERPsystem that exists.
(27:44):
So we actually wrote our own.
So we worked with a localdeveloper and we built one from
scratch, and that actuallyturned out to be good, because
we're at least we have a fairidea in terms of how the
business is doing our purchases,our inventory, our you know,
mis, our excise reports,everything.
Now that's the backbone of whatwe do Now.
(28:05):
When we sent our beers out,every truck has a GPS system, so
that's not a big deal.
Every truck you can also do theleast cost routing.
But one of the things that wedeveloped with the early
logistics provider was this,which is, every location that we
supplied beers to in thebeginning were all geofence.
So when the truck reached thegeofence location, a trigger
(28:29):
would go to the cloud saying thetruck has reached, and then the
guy would then have to take thekeg out and then take it and
load it into the cold box ofevery single outlet that was
buying our beers, and then hewould take a picture of the
barcode that was on top of thekeg and that was another top of
the keg and that was anothersignal to the cloud.
So the delta t between when thetruck reached to when the guys
(28:52):
took the picture and lured inthe cold box was the time it had
taken that the beer was exposedto heat.
So we tried to minimize that asas much as we could right,
because my big fear was that youknow somebody's going to keep a
keg on the ground, take a smoke, take a leak, whatever right,
and it will actually be sittingon the sidewalk and that was not
(29:13):
a good thing.
So we decided that we're goingto implement this tech to make
sure that we have as littleexposure to heat as we can.
You know, it's also interestingbecause we had these big, huge
stainless steel refrigeratorswhere you had three kegs on the
top and three kegs at the bottomand customers bought that
reluctantly because we refusedto supply beers to anybody that
(29:35):
didn't have these refrigerators.
And then people kept saying youknow what?
This is a really ugly box.
I don't want to keep this in mybeautiful bar.
And they were right.
So how do we solve this problem?
Because people don't want tokeep this and at the same time
we want to keep our beers cold.
So we said, okay.
(29:56):
So if you look at how draft beeris dispensed, so you've got a
keg and into the keg you pushCO2, which is inert gas, and the
beer gets drafted out of thekeg through a pipe, right, and
it comes to a chiller and it'scalled a beer chiller, or think
of it as a flash chiller.
So the beer goes through aseries of coils that's enveloped
(30:19):
in ice and by the time it comesup to the tap, right, the beer
is cold.
It comes up to the tap, thebeer is cold.
But to keep that tower, whichhas all these taps on it, cold,
the central part of that chilleris all cold water, and so
there's a little impeller thatkeeps rotating to keep no ice
from being formed and that coldwater gets pushed up to the top
(30:40):
of the tower to keep the entiretower cold.
So you minimize even the beerthat is sitting in the tower,
right, you want to keep thatalso as cold as you possibly can
.
Got it.
Then we said you know what?
Wait a second, there's coldwater and it's only being used
to keep the tower cold.
What if we use that to actuallykeep our kegs cold.
So we innovated on this thingcalled the keg sleeve.
(31:02):
So it's like this little jacketthat you put around the keg
that has these little pipesgoing around it and the cold
water from that chiller actuallycirculates through right the
keg sleeve, it keeps the coldfrom the outside also.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
And, of course, when people have multiple kegs, there
wasn't enough pressure from thepump, so all we had to do was
replace the pump and put in ahigh-pressure pump, and that
seems to be working okay.
So we're able to keep our kegscold up to 10 degrees even
without a cold box.
Very nice, Very nice.
And so, like I told you earlier, you can't scale this business
(31:40):
if you're end-to-end cold.
So we will be going into whatwe call ambient craft in the
next couple of months.
So we will be going into whatwe call ambient craft in the
next couple of months, and forthat the tech there is and this
is the hope and the dream is touse as much AI as we can to
minimize the amount of time thatour cases of beer are sitting
in a Karnataka government people.
(32:01):
So, we want to optimize thesupply chain as best as we can
to ensure that we know exactlywhat beers are sitting in the
retail outlets.
So the way it works for a canis this.
For a keg, by the way, we cansend a keg directly to a
restaurant, but for a can or abottle it has to go through a
Karnataka government depot.
So you typically send productto the depot.
(32:22):
It sits there and all you cando in hope and praise is people
are buying your beers quickly.
The longer it takes, the moreheat it suffers, right, and so
typically what happens is thatthe, the retailer, the wine
shops, will come to the depot,pick up your beers, take it
there and keep it in his outletand keep it cold generally.
But with the amount of timethat is sitting in the depot,
it's exposed to severe heat.
(32:43):
So you want to minimize thatexposure as best as you can,
which is what we're working onright now.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Wow, very cool.
And do you have like a techteam that's working on all of
this stuff?
Speaker 1 (32:54):
There's nobody inside who's tech.
We work with a bunch ofpartners on the outside.
So even the ERP we develop withsomebody on the outside and we
work very, very closelyliterally every week, working
with them, as we are doing nowto improve our ERP.
We've got a bunch of techpartners who we work with to get
this done.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Very nice, very cool.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthe rest of the team and how
the company is set up?
And we have other friends alsowho are involved in the business
.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
So Mohan, our classmate, is involved.
He's my business partner, sohe's pretty much CEO of the
company.
Unfortunately he's not doingvery well health-wise so he's
taking a backseat right now.
But so there's Mohan, who's ourclassmate.
Before Mohan was actually Paul,who I started this business
(33:42):
with another classmate of oursand Paul is, you know, half
Bengali, half German, full-timehippie right.
So he wanted to travel theworld and whatever else.
So he helped very, very worldand whatever else.
So he helped a lot.
And, by the way, this entirefactory was built by Paul, so
the entire layouting andeverything else.
His German sensibilities havecome into the picture and
(34:03):
hopefully you'll see somepictures of that too when you're
there.
It's really nicely organizedand I look back and I say, wow,
the guy really put some thoughtinto this.
So, um, and in German style,you know, the factory is laid
out in three strips.
The one strip is a utilitystrip, but all the utilities are
there so it can be easilyserviced.
The middle strip is a brewingstrip and the fermentation strip
(34:25):
and the.
The third strip is your is your, is your finished goods and
your raw material strip.
So basically that.
So it so, basically that.
So his thought process was tominimize as much of this, what
he called spaghetti movement inthe factory.
Anyway, so that's Paul.
We have a VP of sales andmarketing who takes care of all
(34:46):
of the sales and marketingacross the entire country.
We have a brand person, a brandteam.
We have an HR team.
We have a factory manager whoruns all the operations
logistics, etc.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
How big is the entire team?
Speaker 1 (35:00):
So today, geist is 280 people, of which 80% of it
works in hospitality.
So we have three of these ofour own outlets, and the
remaining 20% is basicallybrewing and what we call
corporate.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
So the brewing team is probably like 50 people.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
No, no, no, no, no, it's 14, no, no, 10 people.
Sorry, what am I saying?
10 people.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Wow, that's really high, yeah, our you know revenue
per employee.
If you think about it that way,yeah, quite amazing, quite
amazing.
So, you know, tell us a littlebit of your views on the
consumer mindset and the cultureand how that has evolved.
And we've seen articles about,certainly in India, bangalore is
(35:42):
the number one beer city andit's one of the top beer cities
in the world.
Now, how has that evolved overthe past couple of decades and
what are you seeing on thehorizon?
Yeah, and what are you seeingon the horizon?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, so I think I mean, by the way, bangalore is
the capital of craft beer in thecountry, right?
So the excellence that you gethere for craft beer, in my
opinion, still is miles ahead ofany other state that is there
in India right now serving craftbeer.
Bangalore.
To me, I've always defined thisas a California of India, which
(36:17):
means all trends are set here,that kind of percolate to the
rest of the country.
Um, so people here.
By the way, we have to thankvijay, malia and kingfisher to
set up this entire draft culturein the city in the first place.
Right, it was because of himthat he he actually got
concessions the government andand convinced the government
that draft beer should not gothrough a government depot, it
(36:39):
can be sent directly to theoutlet, and that has obviously
helped people like us and manyother companies.
So we have to thank him for thework that he did but that
created this whole beer culturein in our country.
That that, uh, coupled with thefact that you know there are so
many people working in IT inthis country who obviously have
this hunger for knowledge, notjust in their own line of work
(37:02):
but in every aspect of life thatthey encounter.
There's just this thirst andhunger for knowledge, right, and
people just want to be a betterversion of themselves every
single day, which is amazing,right.
And then I see more inBangalore.
Of course it's happening now.
It's percolating the rest ofthe country, but in Bangalore
this is where it all started,coupled with that where people
have traveled all over the place.
So you'd have these techies whowould go to every part of the
(37:26):
globe to work, experience theculture there, drink the beers
there, and they came back andthey kept asking the question
why can't we have the same beershere?
Right, and that's a that's atrend.
Fortunately, we saw happen quiteearly.
Another trend that I saw happenquite early is people wanted to
drink better and eat better,you know.
So this whole thing aboutorganic food, putting better
(37:48):
things into your mouth, um,especially for people who could
afford it, right, better food,better food for their kids,
better beverage for their kids,less sugar, lower gluten, lower
carbs all that stuff kind ofstarted happening many, many
years ago, and then COVID justaccelerated that trend, right?
So when COVID happened, I thinkpeople started seeing their
mortality saying, oh my gosh,you know, I have no idea how
(38:09):
many years I'm going to be alive, so let me do the best that I
can for myself and my family,and so that accelerated the
trend.
So now what we are seeing isthis definite trend towards
premiumization definite trend.
So people are spending money andsaying, listen, I don't need to
drink a lot of beer, but if I'mgoing to drink, let me drink
really good beer and I don'tmind spending a little bit more
(38:31):
money for it.
Now, yes, still, 85% of thebeer sold in our country is
strong beer.
That goes into rural areas, butthe trend of premiumization so
just to give you a smallstatistic right Growth of
premium beers is at like 30 to40%.
The growth of mass market valuebeers is like 10%, 7 to 10%.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
But on a higher base.
On a much higher base.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Right is like 10% 7% to 10%, so clearly on a much
higher base, right.
But there is a growing numberof people who want to drink
better, who want to eat better,willing to pay more money for it
, and so that has helped Geistand for us.
We've been absolutely obsessedwith quality, and I don't say
(39:12):
this frivolously, I say thisbecause we really mean it.
I mean the amount of testingand the amount of agonizing that
we do over our beers is, youknow, is a lot, and so we hope
that that can effectivelytranslate to the fact that we
get to be known, or continue tobe known, more and more, as you
(39:34):
know, from a good beer to agreat beer, to an amazing beer.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
So well, that's the serious side.
You know, there's always anextraordinary sense of humor
when you go about naming yourbeers, yeah Right.
So who's the genius behind that?
It can't be you for sure, Justkidding.
But you know every one of thesehas some you know really cool
names and would love to take aphotograph of your the menu in
(39:59):
the video but yeah, I would loveto hear.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
I think it's a team effort.
It's a team effort.
We actually use thisopportunity to get the team
involved in naming of the beersright, and so some of the most
creative names have come fromthe team.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Of course, some came from me, but in the early days,
maybe after a few beers.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Maybe after a few beers.
Yeah, and in the early days Iremember more than I talking
saying you know, people don'tknow about craft beer, so we
should actually have the name orthe style of the beer in the
name.
So Witty, wit, wit is a shortform for wit beer, so it's a
Belgian wit beer.
Wit is a short form for witbeer, so it's a belgian wit beer
(40:37):
.
And we couldn't think ofanything else.
So we said let's call it thewitty wit because it's
intelligent, right, and so thatwas one.
The uncle dunkel, uh, is adunkel, is a dark beer.
Dunkel means dark and this wasa dunkelweizen.
But we said if you putdunkelweizen in the beer it's
going to be like you know toomuch for people to say we just
we call it dunkel even thoughtechnically, technically, it
should, it should have beendunkelweizen, but anyway.
(40:57):
So uncle dunkel just soundednice.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
We just I'm gonna, it's gonna be my new nickname,
uncle dunkel and then the ipawas my was my naming because it
was.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
We used something called citra hox in the beer and
I couldn't think of anythingelse.
We said let's call it kamasCitra because it just sounded
like Karma Sutra.
So the belief is that goodthings will happen when you
drink an IPA.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
So the Karma Citra was there, I think you're having
a good time.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah, and then one of the agencies we worked with for
our branding and for ourgraphics we had just introduced
the Stout and they came up withthe name called stouter space
Right.
And then one more person whowas who was with us is who's now
moved to Canada Akhil Nair henamed.
(41:46):
We have the smoked wheat beerwhich, by the way, won a silver
award at the European beer star,and be the first brewery yes,
yes, I saw the photograph onyour home page first brewery in
the countries to win an award inthat in that competition, which
is very nice.
So akhil named that beer uh, anda smoked beer.
Smoke in german means rauch andhe came up with the name.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Rauch a fella, yeah so, yeah, awesome, awesome, all
right.
So now you know, beer makinghas gone from your passion
project to being a business.
What is your next passionproject?
Speaker 1 (42:20):
yeah, yeah, consuming it no, I think, for me.
You know, people say this is apassion project, but I would
also tell you this one thingwhat I've learned is the
following any project that hasto be successful has to go from
one P to three P's right.
It has to go from passion topersistence to profitability
(42:40):
right.
So these three things arecrucially important If you're
going to be successful inbusiness, because a lot of
people start off with passion,like I did, and you know what,
if you don't pay attention tothe bottom line, you're going to
get screwed right.
So make sure that you payattention to the details of your
money, understand where yourmoney is coming from and where
it's going.
And the last thing is this itis excruciatingly difficult,
(43:03):
especially in our country, to dobusiness.
Everybody knows this.
I wish it was easier, but it'sdifficult and, by the way, it's
no different in many, many othercountries in the world.
You just have to havepersistence and grit to get that
done.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Yeah, on that note, nari, just before we wrap for
today, maybe some of yourlooking back and some of your
key takeaways and advice for theyounger version of yourself or
for new entrepreneurs startingout, what would you?
I mean, you had some goldennuggets right now, but generally
, so, yeah, for me it's thethree Ps.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
It is literally passion, persistence and
profitability.
Pay attention to the money.
And everybody, by the way, saysdon't quit.
I think that's largely correct,right, even though there are so
many times in your life youwanted to say you know, screw it
, it's just too much, I justcan't do this anymore, there's
no money, um, it is too much ofpressure, I just don't want to
do this anymore.
(43:58):
But those are the moments whenyou decide and say stay on right
, I have this, this, this deepbelief.
I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, but I call it the hand of god.
And my, my, uh, my belief hasalways been this that if you're
fighting every day in thetrenches, fighting the good
fight, a light will appear thateffectively shows you and says
(44:21):
that's the direction that you go.
And I think the one saying thathas kind of guided me through
troubled waters was a sayingfrom Narayan Ramachandran, my
mentor and a good friend, and hesaid entrepreneurship is about
being in business long enoughtill the lightning bolt strikes
and you have no idea which wayyou're going to go.
(44:42):
You think you're going to gothere, and I remember telling
myself and saying oh, by the way, when I go, it's going to be
choppy waters and I'm going tobe in a boat and it's going to
be tough.
What the reality of that was isit wasn't a boat, it's a
coracle, it's choppy waters andyou're spinning as you're going
down these choppy waters and youhave no idea where you're going
(45:04):
.
But just kind of figure it out,be there, stick with it, it'll
all work out.
And India is the 10-year rule.
Any business that is built,it's going to take 10 years to
build.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah, no, it's absolutely true.
And look, thanks, so muchAmazing words to end on, and
look forward to seeing theprogress of Geist over the
coming years.
Congratulations for everythingyou've done here.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
Dear listeners, thank you for listening to this
episode of the podcast.
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You get your podcasts, then hitsubscribe and if you have
(45:51):
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a review on Apple podcast.
To read the full transcript,find the link in the show notes.
I just wanted to brew beer and open a microbrewery.
We were earning $600,000 in amonth.
Bangalore is the capital ofcraft beer in the country and
this is like a billion-dollarindustry.
The homebrewing industry ismassive, really smart engineers.
Everybody brewed beer in theirhome.
You're allowed to make 30liters of beer free without a
license, as long as you don'tsell it.
Beers are categorized into twomain buckets there are ales and
(00:22):
there are lagers.
Ales typically use topfermenting yeast.
Lager strains typically tend tostay at the bottom in order to
produce the same beer over andover and over again.
That takes skill, it takesexperience, it takes dedication.
It takes, you know, it takestech.
We have to thank Vijay Mallyaand Kingfisher.
So we said let's call it KamaSutra, because it just sound
like Kama Sutra.
It has to go from passion topersistence to profitability.
(00:44):
At the end of the day, it'sabout making somebody feel
really good when they drink aglass of beer.
Speaker 2 (00:55):
Hi again, welcome to the next episode of the Prime
Venture Partners podcast.
And I have with me a friend andwhat hopefully will be a very
special episode, my dear friendfrom school.
We've had several names for him, but his official name is
Narayan and for today's show Ishall call him Narayan.
No, I'm actually going to callyou Nari.
(01:16):
I can't call you anything else.
But my dear buddy from StJoseph's Boys High School and
college and, through life, knowneach other for the better part
of 50 years Scary to say thatSeriously.
But most importantly, now he isthe star co-founder and owner
of Geist Brewery microbreweryStar.
(01:39):
Really, I have to say somethingpolite, and we're going to talk
here a little bit about hisjourney from a little kid that I
knew him to becoming anengineer, working overseas,
coming back to India andeventually starting up what for
(02:00):
many years was his passionproject and converting it into a
business Guy's Brewery and Nadi.
Welcome to the show.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (02:09):
Our audience here are largely tech entrepreneurs, so
we will bring in a little bit ofhow tech is involved in the
making of beer and the managingof the business.
So maybe we can start a littlebit with you telling us about
your early days and slowly, overa period of time, you know
where you studied, where youworked, and we'll come down to
(02:30):
the the beer part later on yeah,so I left to go to the us in 89
.
Tell us from school oh, fromschool.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
So I'm born in mysore , uh, brought up in bangalore.
That's when I met you at school, at St Joseph's Boys' High
School, which feels like aneternity now, by the way.
It feels like just the otherday, if you ask me Easy for you
to say Sorry, I'm sweating as wetalk because it's kind of warm
(03:02):
today, but anyway, perfect timefor a beer, absolutely so.
After school I went to BMS.
I did my PUC at St Joseph's.
Went to BMS because I flunkedthe IIT exam.
I couldn't get in.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And then that's two of us.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Seriously, but anyway so.
And then finished BMS, headedto Virginia Tech for my master's
, but anyway so.
And then finished PMS, headedto Virginia Tech for my master's
, and there in the computerscience department was this
absolutely amazing technologycalled DBI, that stood for
(03:38):
digital video interactive.
And I was looking at thiscomputer screen and it was like
a walkthrough of a Mayan cave.
And so somebody had taken acamera and put it on their
shoulder and they had kind oftaken a picture step by step and
they had stitched thesepictures together and so you
could actually walk through thisentire cave.
And again, if you looked at thefar right you could see the
(03:58):
little ant, and if you clickedon it you could hear the ant's
chirp or the sound and thegenealogy of the ant.
It was just absolutelyfascinating stuff.
And it was that moment I decidedthat I somehow have to find a
job at this place.
And they were based inPrinceton, new Jersey.
It was an Intel department, soIntel had sponsored this
(04:20):
technology, and then it was alittle research group called PRO
, the Princeton ResearchOperation.
So I stayed with my sister, whowas not very far away from
there, sent my resume in andthen I got called for an
interview After many, many daysof trying, and then there were
five people over a whole day ofinterviews and I got hired and I
(04:45):
was just like the mostbrilliant set of people I've
worked with in my life.
Just absolutely amazing, anyway.
So I worked on a bunch ofdifferent things.
Then one day our legendary CEOat that time, a person called
Andy Groh he came in and all ofthe work that we were doing in
PRO, which is a Princetonresearch operation, was all
(05:06):
non-real-time stuff.
So you would take a video, youwould compress it with an
algorithm and then you wouldplay it back by decompressing it
on hardware.
Speaker 2 (05:14):
This is early 90s we're talking about.
Speaker 1 (05:15):
This is 1991-92.
And he came in and he said what?
is all this bullshit,non-real-time stuff.
I want something in real time.
And he came in and he said whatis all this bullshit,
non-real-time stuff?
I want something in real time.
And he had this thick Hungarianaccent, just this amazing human
being, anyway.
So he told us this, gave usthis mandate and basically told
(05:37):
the team and said I want you touse as little hardware as
possible and I want you to startmoving as much of the
processing power onto the nativeprocessor on the CPU.
And so the team worked on abunch of different things, but
the algorithm guy startedworking on something called NSP,
which is native signalprocessing, taking away HOSPA
(05:58):
from a digital signal processor,which is a DI-based DSP.
And me and another guy calledPeter were given the role to
figure out what real-time stuffcan you create.
And so we came up with the ideaof a video conferencing system.
So we actually worked on thisand it worked.
It was actually fascinatingbecause you could send audio
(06:20):
video and you could share textand all the stuff that you can
do on Zoom today.
We had it working in 1993 andandy showed that at the intel
sales and marketing conferencein 1993 in front of 2 000 people
, and I remember backstage.
He comes by, he stops, he looksat me and says this had better
work.
And then he goes in straight todo the presentation and we had
(06:44):
linked IJKK, which is Intel,japan, princeton and Andy
sitting in Arizona, and itworked and he absolutely loved
it and he said, okay, we'regoing to create a real product
out of this.
And so the entire thing shiftedto the Intel Communications
Group in Portland, oregon, in1993.
I was shifted to that, to thatdivision, and started working on
(07:07):
stuff.
I mean, it's hard.
It's hard to say this nowbecause I was the only indian
guy in my group and today what?
35 of intel, maybe more, isindian.
But um, I started working onthis and then everybody in my
group again a a bunch of reallysmart engineers.
Everybody brewed beer in theirhomes, because in Oregon you're
(07:29):
allowed to make 30 liters ofbeer free, without a license, as
long as you don't sell it, andthis is like a billion-dollar
industry.
The homebrewing industry ismassive.
So I got into this thing.
I went to brew beer with my guy, with my friends, got, you know
, made a few batches of beer,fell in love with it and started
building a little brewery in mygarage and then started brewing
(07:51):
and then added every singlebell and whistle because you
know you always thought youbring in more technology, your
beer is going to be better.
Nothing can be further from thetruth.
Nothing worked, basically, butanyway put in every single bell
and whistle that you could thinkof in my home brewing system
and kept brewing beers.
But one day I remember, andthat was probably one of the
(08:11):
days, that inflection point, asthey call it, where I made the
decision to come back to India.
So my cube mate and Intel isthis cubicle desert?
Right, it's just gray cubiclesfor miles and miles and miles as
far as the eye can see.
So in my nine by nine cubicle,jeff and I were cube mates.
So Jeff said, hey, let's go.
It was a Friday afternoon, itwas bright and sunny, which is
(08:37):
rare for Oregon.
It's always raining.
So he said do you want to goget a bite to eat?
And I said, great.
So we went to Hillsborough,which is is downtown, and then,
finished on wheel, came out andwe saw this board called main
street homebrew, and so helooked at me and says you want
to go back to work?
I said, now, let's just go inthere.
So we walked in there andthere's a guy called kevin, who
(08:58):
was a phd in microbiology, whoquit his job to start a
homebrewing store because heloves craft beer and and he
gives this big gyan about youknow how do you make this and
you know what do you do.
And we were fascinated, I wasjust like completely enamored by
this whole thing.
And literally $65 later,walking out with buckets and
tubes and raw materials andstuff, and we go straight to my
house to brew a batch of beerand we brewed it.
(09:20):
Obviously we skipped work.
And then, many weeks later, jefftells me and says, hey, I've
invited a bunch of friends tocome and try our beers.
And I'm like you know.
So we had followed all thethings that kevin had told us to
do.
And then I said, man, this isgoing to be crazy.
You know, you're not going tobe able to.
We can't serve this beer, it'sgoing to taste like shit.
And he's like it's only friends, don't worry about it.
(09:42):
So I went the local store,picked up a bunch of craft beer,
put it in the refrigerator andthen, when the friends came, I
actually remember we had thisCoca-Cola keg, the Cornelius keg
, and I put this little plasticcoupler on top of the keg and I
had a little plastic tap and Ipoured the beer into the glass
and the beer was fantastic.
It was just fantastic.
(10:02):
So that was a moment I said Ihave to go back to India to do
this, because every time I cometo India and you know, when
you're in your late 20s parentsare really worried that if you
hit 30, then all the goodlooking women or the good women
will kind of disappear.
So I had this intense pressureto get married and I would come
(10:23):
every year to meet women to getmarried to.
And then every time I came backto India, the only beer
available was Kingfisher, and sowhen I made this California
Golden Ale, it was justbrilliant and I said, yeah, we
have to take it back and do this.
So that was the moment Idecided to go back to India.
What they didn't tell me wasevery subsequent batch of beer
that I brewed after that tastedlike shit.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
But anyway.
Speaker 1 (10:49):
Anyway, the good thing is I came back here and
didn't quit.
And you know, when you enter anew business, you always have
this, you know this rose-coloredglasses view of the world,
saying I'm going to go changethe world and do this.
And it's excruciatinglydifficult to do business in a
regulated environment.
But we've built something.
And I think what is mostsatisfying to me, sanjay, is
(11:12):
seven years ago when somebodyasked me and said what do you do
?
And I said I work for Geist.
And they'd say what's that?
And then I have to go tolengthy tirade about craft beer
and this and this and whateverelse.
And now when I tell people Iwork for Geist, they say, oh, we
love your beer, so we've donesomething right.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Wonderful, Wonderful.
Maybe for the novices includingmyself, what are the different
types of beers that are there?
And when you use the term craftbeer, what does that mean, etc.
Maybe you can give a quick viewof the land here.
Speaker 1 (11:42):
So broadly beers are categorized into two main
buckets.
There are ales and there arelagers.
So ales typically are brewed ata higher temperature with a
different kind of yeast strainand the fermentation time is
about 14 days.
With the lager, it's brewedwith a lager strain of yeast and
(12:05):
it's brewed between 11 and 17degrees and it's brewed for a
much longer period of time,between 21 and 25 days.
So the mouthfeel, the taste arevery, very different in both
the beers.
One is a lot more rounded, alot more mouthfeel in the ales
and in the case of lagers youhave a much kind of crisper,
drier beer that you can get onyour palate.
(12:28):
Now, that said, that's the maintwo categories, right?
But today ales are being madelike lagers and lagers are being
made like ales and they use alestrains to make a lager and
lager strains to make an ale,and so the distinction between
these two categories are alsokind of becoming blurred.
But generally these two stillstand.
(12:51):
It's easier to explain to thelayman, but if you really want
to go technical about it you'llhave to say the two main
categories of beer are beersthat are fermented.
Top fermented yeast are usedand bottom fermented yeast used
for the beer.
So ales typically use topfermenting yeast.
So when they ferment they arepretty much at the top and once
(13:12):
they're done fermenting theydrop to the bottom.
Lager strains typically tend tostay at the bottom.
So if you want to classifybeers at a very general level,
it's ales and lagers.
But because the lines areblurred now between ales and
lagers, you can say the two maincategories are bottom
fermenting yeast, beers madewith bottom fermenting yeast or
beers made with top fermentingyeast.
Speaker 2 (13:29):
Got it.
And then what about?
You know you talked about craftbeer versus other problems.
Speaker 1 (13:37):
Yeah.
So I guess the definition ofcraft varies from country to
country, person to person, andeverybody has an opinion of what
craft beer really is.
To me, craft beer is everythingthat the people say, which is
you know, smaller batches, morevariety, independently owned.
(14:00):
You know the owners of thebusiness have greater than 50
percent, say, in the business.
You know they don't producehuge volumes.
So there's a.
There's a, there's a cap on thenumber of liters that are
produced every year.
There's also provenance Right.
So, for example, if your beersare made from Bangalore, that's
itself one of the checkboxes forcraft, I think.
(14:21):
To me, craft is about using yourknowledge, wisdom and
experience to make somethinggreat, right, and at the end of
the day, it's about makingsomebody feel really good when
they drink a glass of beer.
And so that takes skill, ittakes experience, it takes
dedication, it takes, you know,it takes tech, uh.
(14:44):
So you have to be technicallyskilled at what you do in order
to produce the same beer overand over and over again.
Anybody can make a good batchof beer, like I found out when I
made the california golden ale,uh, and then every good batch
of beer, like I found out when Imade the California Golden Ale
and then every subsequent batchof beer was terrible, but it
takes skill and knowledge andexperience to get this product
out consistently thateffectively makes customers feel
great about it.
Speaker 2 (15:04):
Wonderful.
Maybe we can talk a little bitabout that journey, where it was
this passion project tobecoming a mainstream business
of yours, journey of you know,where it was this passion
project to becoming a mainstream, uh, you know, business of
yours, right, and you sort ofbleeped over probably what was
20 years and you said, oh, andthen I started guys, and people
said what is guys trying toexplain?
But, um, just that journey andthat path for you know,
(15:27):
discovering that this is reallywhat you wanted to do as a
full-time, you know activity, uh, because you could have always,
you know, shared the, you knowthe formula with someone and,
you know, had the manufactureryou chose to actually make this
thing.
So how did that come about?
And I know, in the middle youwere also working very closely
with your father's factory inthe automotive parts space, et
(15:49):
cetera.
So a little bit about thatphase would be good to hear
about as well.
Speaker 1 (15:54):
So when I came back, when I came back, I just wanted
to brew beer and open amicrobrewery, and every place
that I went to they said oh,microbrewery laws don't exist,
it's illegal to do this.
We cannot allow you to do this.
And, by the way, I went and metpoliticians and you know how it
(16:15):
is right the demands for stuff.
Speaker 2 (16:19):
Actually, I don't know how it is, but let's not go
there, so anyway.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
So the thing is.
So we came back.
I wanted to open a microbrewery.
Laws didn't exist.
I had all these beer recipesthat I had made and friends of
mine and mentors of mine saidhey, you know what?
You've got these recipes.
Why don't you take theserecipes, get it made abroad and
bring it back to India?
Because you can't get a licenseto manufacture or start a
(16:45):
microbrewery.
So that's what we did.
So we took our recipes, went andmet brewers in Germany, brewers
in Belgium, and worked withthem.
And then I remember this oneparticular instance with this
Belgian brewery.
This brewer called Javier andhe kept saying Narayan, it's
(17:08):
about controlling yeast,controlling yeast.
And I couldn't quite understandwhat he meant and what he was
saying.
But I you know, I understandthe depth of what he was trying
to say now but anyway.
So we got our beers made there,brought it back to India and
not being finance guys, wedidn't realize that we were
literally wrapping 50 rupeenotes across every bottle of
(17:29):
beer that we were selling.
So we weren't making any money.
But it was actually fascinatingbecause we started working with
the excise department.
We understood how to make acost card.
We actually had our owntransportation company, so we
were selling our beers throughour own little trucks and tempos
and whatever else acrossBangalore.
(17:50):
So we understood quite a bit inthat whole process, right.
We understood excise, weunderstood warehousing, we
understood transportation.
We understood a bunch of things.
Of course we weren't making anymoney.
In parallel we keptcontinuously working with the
excise department, as did a fewothers, and the person who got
his license first for amicrobrewery was a guy called
(18:11):
Arvind Raju at Beer Club.
So he got his license and soonthereafter all the others
started opening up.
We got involved with twomicrobreweries, brewski and Big
Brewski.
Oh, in those days it was calledBrewski and Big Brewski.
And I have to tell you, thefirst time in my life I felt
like a rockstar because thisthing was wildly, wildly
successful and between these twooutlets we were earning
(18:32):
$600,000 in a month and you knowyour gross margins are 67%.
I'm like, oh my gosh, this isabsolutely amazing.
And then people kept saying atthese breweries they would say
love your beer, hate theBangalore traffic, please make
this available closer to wherewe live.
Now the structure of breweriesin Karnataka and most states in
(18:53):
the country is microbreweriesare not allowed to distribute
beyond premise.
So whatever you make, you haveto sell within your four
compound vaults.
The big breweries are makingbeers in huge volumes, right,
but they were not making thekinds of beers or they couldn't
(19:13):
make the kinds of beers thatcustomers in the urban areas
wanted to drink.
So we said, okay, so what if weset up this distribution craft
brewery is what we called itwhere we had a big brewery
license but we made smallbrewery-like beers, and that was
the first time ever in SouthIndia that anybody tried this
experiment.
So we did it and we weresupplying kegs b2b to outlets
(19:35):
across, and I remember, you know, when we started.
The first keg went out august5th 2017 and, um, it was to a
place called locals diner inkamenahalli, and I could tell
you the pride that the entireteam felt about going there and
drinking a glass of it was like,oh think, oh my gosh, this is
amazing.
Subsequently, we've grown.
We are in multiple cities.
(19:56):
Now we're in Bangalore, we'rein Telangana, we're in
Pondicherry, we're in Mahe andthis year we'll probably be in
two other states.
So we're doing this slowly.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
All right, so now you're in.
You said five states.
Four states Four states, statesand how many locations?
Speaker 1 (20:12):
again 450, 450 locations now, this one is the
original this is the og one,yeah, yes.
So this actually was a covidbaby for us, because we started
the business 2017 we'reprimarily b2b business,
supplying kegs and then Iremember we got our last payment
march 14, 2020, 2020, andeverything stopped after that
(20:36):
and we're all completelyshell-shocked because we're
completely on trade.
So, by the way, the business inbeer if you go to a restaurant
and drink at the restaurant,it's called an on-trade business
.
If you go to a wine store or ashop and you pick up your beers
and take it home, it's called anoff-trade business.
Now our business in 2017 and forthe next couple of years was
(20:57):
all on trade and this businesscompletely dried up, and so I
had no idea how deep, how far,how wide, how long this is going
to be, and the only objective Ihad was save the company and
don't fire any employees,because I just didn't feel it
was humane to let people go.
(21:17):
And you kept hearing all thesehorror stories of people just
being let go because peopledidn't want to pay, and I said
we're not going to do that right.
And so I was sitting up latenights wondering, scratching my
head.
People didn't want to pay,people didn't have any money,
money to pay true, maybe that'strue too, but you know, maybe
maybe there were some that didhave the money and didn't want
(21:38):
to pay because they won't dealwith it.
Whatever right.
But the point is we decidedwe're not going to lay anybody
off, and I'm proud to say wedidn't lay a single person off
in the entire covid period.
Uh, anyway.
So at this point in time I wasscratching my head, saying how
do we keep this business alive?
And I came up with this storyin my head that said listen, if
I can't sell to anybody, let meat least sell to myself.
(22:00):
And so I wanted these twobeautiful trees here One's a
banyan tree and one's a peopletree and I'd always had this
desire of setting up a beergarden underneath these two
trees, because that's absolutelymagnificent.
And the Karnataka government hasa policy called the refreshment
room, which effectively meansthat any brewery or winery that
(22:22):
makes product can have asampling room or a tasting room.
Uh, you know, in their premises.
What they didn't tell me wasthat they wouldn't allow you to
do it in open air, and so Ispent multiple weeks, months,
trying to convince thedepartment, saying listen, this
has to be open air, you can't dothis under a closed roof, and
so I went and worked withgovernment officials in the
(22:44):
Vidhan Sawda trying to get thisbeer garden open, and also got
permission to create thisconcept of a growler.
It's a two liter jug, you know.
I should probably get you asample.
You want to see it have?
Speaker 3 (22:58):
you seen what a growler is?
Speaker 1 (22:59):
Yeah, I'll get you one.
Can I get a sample of a growler?
So, anyway, got this permissionto allow for these growlers to
be defined by Karnataka exciseand for these growlers to be
taken away from here.
Because I was telling peoplehey, you know, if people are
going to come to the beer garden, many of them don't have the
option of going anywhere elsebecause many things are closed.
(23:21):
Allow people to take it fromhere.
And they agreed.
So we started this in 2020.
And what we also didn't realizeat that time was this is an
amazing brand building tool forus.
You know, people come, theyconnect with the brand, they see
a clean toilet, good food, goodbeer, good ambiance and they
feel more connected to thecompany.
And we had hoped that thiswould translate to better beer
(23:45):
sales when we introduced our can, and that actually turned out
to be correct.
So in 2020, we actuallyintroduced cans that would go
out to the retail stores.
Nice, so between the cans andthe kegs, we are in 250
locations.
Speaker 2 (24:02):
So this is what.
So this was your innovation.
This is the growler, yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:07):
And then we also got this modified to create a
crowler, which is a cannedgrowler, canned version of this,
and yeah so, but do you knowwhy it's called a growler?
No, okay, so in the UK whenpeople would make beer in
community breweries and take ithome, they would take it home in
(24:31):
these pails and apparently whenthey walked, you would hear a
growling sound.
That was made in the pail andthat's how it came to be called
a growler.
So that's what it is.
Speaker 2 (24:53):
So let's step back a little bit and talk about some
of the extraordinary use of techand IoT and things like that
that you sort of innovated herea bit as well, and I remember
when we talked you would talk alot about ensuring that the
temperature is perfectly doneand the transportation that you
could measure and you knewexactly where the beer was in
the delivery, etc.
Transportation and you couldmeasure and you knew exactly
where the beer was in thedelivery, et cetera.
From the logistics side of it.
Some of it is really cold chainrelated stuff, right, but you
kind of went of course, withyour tech background.
(25:14):
I guess you know you're muchmore positively inclined to
trying out some of these.
Since our audience is kind of atech audience, I'm sure they'd
love to hear you know where thetrue sort of hardware, hardware,
software and tech, iot stuffgoes into play.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
here, my guiding light has been the Arrhenius
equation.
The Arrhenius equation wascreated by a Swedish scientist
called Savante Arrhenius, who inthe 1800s, by the way, to his
credit.
Speaker 2 (25:47):
I know you did not learn this in 6th standard.
Speaker 1 (25:49):
I did not learn this in 6th standard and I didn't
learn it in chemistry.
I can tell you that yeah, butthe Arrhenius equation?
Anyway.
So Arrhenius equation SavantyArrhenius was the first person
in the world in the 1800s topredict global warming and he's
the first person in the world toactually quantify the rate of
(26:11):
reaction in a liquid.
And his equation is very simple.
It says for every 10 degreerise from a base of 20 degrees,
the rate of reaction in a liquiddoubles.
So for us, we knew that if youexpose beer to heat, something
bad is going to happen.
We don't know, and still don'tknow, what actually happens
(26:33):
inside a keg or a can when it'skept warm, but it doesn't taste
as great as it does, sosomething bad is happening to
the beer.
So we came up with this,because we use this as a guiding
light.
We said, listen, let's justkeep our beers cold end to end.
So we wanted to make sure that,obviously, from the point of
(27:03):
brewing, through transportation,through dispensing at the
customer side, everything iskept cold.
What it also taught us is thatin our country the cold chain
infrastructure is not going toscale.
So if you want to build thisbusiness end-to-end cold chain
you'll remain a niche business,but our objective is to make
this beer available to as manypeople who can drink it or who
want to drink it.
So it also taught us what beerswould degrade even less.
(27:24):
So it also taught us what beerswould degrade even less right,
and how do you use tech to makesure that it is exposed to the
least amount of heat, even ifyou're not using toll chain
transportation right.
So what we did in the beginningwas the first thing we did was
we said, hey, we need to come upwith an ERP system, because
there is no beer brewing ERPsystem that exists.
(27:44):
So we actually wrote our own.
So we worked with a localdeveloper and we built one from
scratch, and that actuallyturned out to be good, because
we're at least we have a fairidea in terms of how the
business is doing our purchases,our inventory, our you know,
mis, our excise reports,everything.
Now that's the backbone of whatwe do Now.
(28:05):
When we sent our beers out,every truck has a GPS system, so
that's not a big deal.
Every truck you can also do theleast cost routing.
But one of the things that wedeveloped with the early
logistics provider was this,which is, every location that we
supplied beers to in thebeginning were all geofence.
So when the truck reached thegeofence location, a trigger
(28:29):
would go to the cloud saying thetruck has reached, and then the
guy would then have to take thekeg out and then take it and
load it into the cold box ofevery single outlet that was
buying our beers, and then hewould take a picture of the
barcode that was on top of thekeg and that was another top of
the keg and that was anothersignal to the cloud.
So the delta t between when thetruck reached to when the guys
(28:52):
took the picture and lured inthe cold box was the time it had
taken that the beer was exposedto heat.
So we tried to minimize that asas much as we could right,
because my big fear was that youknow somebody's going to keep a
keg on the ground, take a smoke, take a leak, whatever right,
and it will actually be sittingon the sidewalk and that was not
(29:13):
a good thing.
So we decided that we're goingto implement this tech to make
sure that we have as littleexposure to heat as we can.
You know, it's also interestingbecause we had these big, huge
stainless steel refrigeratorswhere you had three kegs on the
top and three kegs at the bottomand customers bought that
reluctantly because we refusedto supply beers to anybody that
(29:35):
didn't have these refrigerators.
And then people kept saying youknow what?
This is a really ugly box.
I don't want to keep this in mybeautiful bar.
And they were right.
So how do we solve this problem?
Because people don't want tokeep this and at the same time
we want to keep our beers cold.
So we said, okay.
(29:56):
So if you look at how draft beeris dispensed, so you've got a
keg and into the keg you pushCO2, which is inert gas, and the
beer gets drafted out of thekeg through a pipe, right, and
it comes to a chiller and it'scalled a beer chiller, or think
of it as a flash chiller.
So the beer goes through aseries of coils that's enveloped
(30:19):
in ice and by the time it comesup to the tap, right, the beer
is cold.
It comes up to the tap, thebeer is cold.
But to keep that tower, whichhas all these taps on it, cold,
the central part of that chilleris all cold water, and so
there's a little impeller thatkeeps rotating to keep no ice
from being formed and that coldwater gets pushed up to the top
(30:40):
of the tower to keep the entiretower cold.
So you minimize even the beerthat is sitting in the tower,
right, you want to keep thatalso as cold as you possibly can
.
Got it.
Then we said you know what?
Wait a second, there's coldwater and it's only being used
to keep the tower cold.
What if we use that to actuallykeep our kegs cold.
So we innovated on this thingcalled the keg sleeve.
(31:02):
So it's like this little jacketthat you put around the keg
that has these little pipesgoing around it and the cold
water from that chiller actuallycirculates through right the
keg sleeve, it keeps the coldfrom the outside also.
Speaker 3 (31:15):
Exactly exactly.
Speaker 1 (31:17):
And, of course, when people have multiple kegs, there
wasn't enough pressure from thepump, so all we had to do was
replace the pump and put in ahigh-pressure pump, and that
seems to be working okay.
So we're able to keep our kegscold up to 10 degrees even
without a cold box.
Very nice, Very nice.
And so, like I told you earlier, you can't scale this business
(31:40):
if you're end-to-end cold.
So we will be going into whatwe call ambient craft in the
next couple of months.
So we will be going into whatwe call ambient craft in the
next couple of months, and forthat the tech there is and this
is the hope and the dream is touse as much AI as we can to
minimize the amount of time thatour cases of beer are sitting
in a Karnataka government people.
(32:01):
So, we want to optimize thesupply chain as best as we can
to ensure that we know exactlywhat beers are sitting in the
retail outlets.
So the way it works for a canis this.
For a keg, by the way, we cansend a keg directly to a
restaurant, but for a can or abottle it has to go through a
Karnataka government depot.
So you typically send productto the depot.
(32:22):
It sits there and all you cando in hope and praise is people
are buying your beers quickly.
The longer it takes, the moreheat it suffers, right, and so
typically what happens is thatthe, the retailer, the wine
shops, will come to the depot,pick up your beers, take it
there and keep it in his outletand keep it cold generally.
But with the amount of timethat is sitting in the depot,
it's exposed to severe heat.
(32:43):
So you want to minimize thatexposure as best as you can,
which is what we're working onright now.
Speaker 2 (32:48):
Wow, very cool.
And do you have like a techteam that's working on all of
this stuff?
Speaker 1 (32:54):
There's nobody inside who's tech.
We work with a bunch ofpartners on the outside.
So even the ERP we develop withsomebody on the outside and we
work very, very closelyliterally every week, working
with them, as we are doing nowto improve our ERP.
We've got a bunch of techpartners who we work with to get
this done.
Speaker 2 (33:10):
Very nice, very cool.
Can you talk a little bit aboutthe rest of the team and how
the company is set up?
And we have other friends alsowho are involved in the business
.
Speaker 1 (33:22):
So Mohan, our classmate, is involved.
He's my business partner, sohe's pretty much CEO of the
company.
Unfortunately he's not doingvery well health-wise so he's
taking a backseat right now.
But so there's Mohan, who's ourclassmate.
Before Mohan was actually Paul,who I started this business
(33:42):
with another classmate of oursand Paul is, you know, half
Bengali, half German, full-timehippie right.
So he wanted to travel theworld and whatever else.
So he helped very, very worldand whatever else.
So he helped a lot.
And, by the way, this entirefactory was built by Paul, so
the entire layouting andeverything else.
His German sensibilities havecome into the picture and
(34:03):
hopefully you'll see somepictures of that too when you're
there.
It's really nicely organizedand I look back and I say, wow,
the guy really put some thoughtinto this.
So, um, and in German style,you know, the factory is laid
out in three strips.
The one strip is a utilitystrip, but all the utilities are
there so it can be easilyserviced.
The middle strip is a brewingstrip and the fermentation strip
(34:25):
and the.
The third strip is your is your, is your finished goods and
your raw material strip.
So basically that.
So it so, basically that.
So his thought process was tominimize as much of this, what
he called spaghetti movement inthe factory.
Anyway, so that's Paul.
We have a VP of sales andmarketing who takes care of all
(34:46):
of the sales and marketingacross the entire country.
We have a brand person, a brandteam.
We have an HR team.
We have a factory manager whoruns all the operations
logistics, etc.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
How big is the entire team?
Speaker 1 (35:00):
So today, geist is 280 people, of which 80% of it
works in hospitality.
So we have three of these ofour own outlets, and the
remaining 20% is basicallybrewing and what we call
corporate.
Speaker 2 (35:13):
So the brewing team is probably like 50 people.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
No, no, no, no, no, it's 14, no, no, 10 people.
Sorry, what am I saying?
10 people.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
Wow, that's really high, yeah, our you know revenue
per employee.
If you think about it that way,yeah, quite amazing, quite
amazing.
So, you know, tell us a littlebit of your views on the
consumer mindset and the cultureand how that has evolved.
And we've seen articles about,certainly in India, bangalore is
(35:42):
the number one beer city andit's one of the top beer cities
in the world.
Now, how has that evolved overthe past couple of decades and
what are you seeing on thehorizon?
Yeah, and what are you seeingon the horizon?
Speaker 1 (35:53):
Yeah, so I think I mean, by the way, bangalore is
the capital of craft beer in thecountry, right?
So the excellence that you gethere for craft beer, in my
opinion, still is miles ahead ofany other state that is there
in India right now serving craftbeer.
Bangalore.
To me, I've always defined thisas a California of India, which
(36:17):
means all trends are set here,that kind of percolate to the
rest of the country.
Um, so people here.
By the way, we have to thankvijay, malia and kingfisher to
set up this entire draft culturein the city in the first place.
Right, it was because of himthat he he actually got
concessions the government andand convinced the government
that draft beer should not gothrough a government depot, it
(36:39):
can be sent directly to theoutlet, and that has obviously
helped people like us and manyother companies.
So we have to thank him for thework that he did but that
created this whole beer culturein in our country.
That that, uh, coupled with thefact that you know there are so
many people working in IT inthis country who obviously have
this hunger for knowledge, notjust in their own line of work
(37:02):
but in every aspect of life thatthey encounter.
There's just this thirst andhunger for knowledge, right, and
people just want to be a betterversion of themselves every
single day, which is amazing,right.
And then I see more inBangalore.
Of course it's happening now.
It's percolating the rest ofthe country, but in Bangalore
this is where it all started,coupled with that where people
have traveled all over the place.
So you'd have these techies whowould go to every part of the
(37:26):
globe to work, experience theculture there, drink the beers
there, and they came back andthey kept asking the question
why can't we have the same beershere?
Right, and that's a that's atrend.
Fortunately, we saw happen quiteearly.
Another trend that I saw happenquite early is people wanted to
drink better and eat better,you know.
So this whole thing aboutorganic food, putting better
(37:48):
things into your mouth, um,especially for people who could
afford it, right, better food,better food for their kids,
better beverage for their kids,less sugar, lower gluten, lower
carbs all that stuff kind ofstarted happening many, many
years ago, and then COVID justaccelerated that trend, right?
So when COVID happened, I thinkpeople started seeing their
mortality saying, oh my gosh,you know, I have no idea how
(38:09):
many years I'm going to be alive, so let me do the best that I
can for myself and my family,and so that accelerated the
trend.
So now what we are seeing isthis definite trend towards
premiumization definite trend.
So people are spending money andsaying, listen, I don't need to
drink a lot of beer, but if I'mgoing to drink, let me drink
really good beer and I don'tmind spending a little bit more
(38:31):
money for it.
Now, yes, still, 85% of thebeer sold in our country is
strong beer.
That goes into rural areas, butthe trend of premiumization so
just to give you a smallstatistic right Growth of
premium beers is at like 30 to40%.
The growth of mass market valuebeers is like 10%, 7 to 10%.
Speaker 2 (38:51):
But on a higher base.
On a much higher base.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Right is like 10% 7% to 10%, so clearly on a much
higher base, right.
But there is a growing numberof people who want to drink
better, who want to eat better,willing to pay more money for it
, and so that has helped Geistand for us.
We've been absolutely obsessedwith quality, and I don't say
(39:12):
this frivolously, I say thisbecause we really mean it.
I mean the amount of testingand the amount of agonizing that
we do over our beers is, youknow, is a lot, and so we hope
that that can effectivelytranslate to the fact that we
get to be known, or continue tobe known, more and more, as you
(39:34):
know, from a good beer to agreat beer, to an amazing beer.
Speaker 2 (39:39):
So well, that's the serious side.
You know, there's always anextraordinary sense of humor
when you go about naming yourbeers, yeah Right.
So who's the genius behind that?
It can't be you for sure, Justkidding.
But you know every one of thesehas some you know really cool
names and would love to take aphotograph of your the menu in
(39:59):
the video but yeah, I would loveto hear.
Speaker 1 (40:02):
I think it's a team effort.
It's a team effort.
We actually use thisopportunity to get the team
involved in naming of the beersright, and so some of the most
creative names have come fromthe team.
Speaker 2 (40:13):
Of course, some came from me, but in the early days,
maybe after a few beers.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Maybe after a few beers.
Yeah, and in the early days Iremember more than I talking
saying you know, people don'tknow about craft beer, so we
should actually have the name orthe style of the beer in the
name.
So Witty, wit, wit is a shortform for wit beer, so it's a
Belgian wit beer.
Wit is a short form for witbeer, so it's a belgian wit beer
(40:37):
.
And we couldn't think ofanything else.
So we said let's call it thewitty wit because it's
intelligent, right, and so thatwas one.
The uncle dunkel, uh, is adunkel, is a dark beer.
Dunkel means dark and this wasa dunkelweizen.
But we said if you putdunkelweizen in the beer it's
going to be like you know toomuch for people to say we just
we call it dunkel even thoughtechnically, technically, it
should, it should have beendunkelweizen, but anyway.
(40:57):
So uncle dunkel just soundednice.
Speaker 2 (40:59):
We just I'm gonna, it's gonna be my new nickname,
uncle dunkel and then the ipawas my was my naming because it
was.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
We used something called citra hox in the beer and
I couldn't think of anythingelse.
We said let's call it kamasCitra because it just sounded
like Karma Sutra.
So the belief is that goodthings will happen when you
drink an IPA.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
So the Karma Citra was there, I think you're having
a good time.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
Yeah, and then one of the agencies we worked with for
our branding and for ourgraphics we had just introduced
the Stout and they came up withthe name called stouter space
Right.
And then one more person whowas who was with us is who's now
moved to Canada Akhil Nair henamed.
(41:46):
We have the smoked wheat beerwhich, by the way, won a silver
award at the European beer star,and be the first brewery yes,
yes, I saw the photograph onyour home page first brewery in
the countries to win an award inthat in that competition, which
is very nice.
So akhil named that beer uh, anda smoked beer.
Smoke in german means rauch andhe came up with the name.
Speaker 2 (42:08):
Rauch a fella, yeah so, yeah, awesome, awesome, all
right.
So now you know, beer makinghas gone from your passion
project to being a business.
What is your next passionproject?
Speaker 1 (42:20):
yeah, yeah, consuming it no, I think, for me.
You know, people say this is apassion project, but I would
also tell you this one thingwhat I've learned is the
following any project that hasto be successful has to go from
one P to three P's right.
It has to go from passion topersistence to profitability
(42:40):
right.
So these three things arecrucially important If you're
going to be successful inbusiness, because a lot of
people start off with passion,like I did, and you know what,
if you don't pay attention tothe bottom line, you're going to
get screwed right.
So make sure that you payattention to the details of your
money, understand where yourmoney is coming from and where
it's going.
And the last thing is this itis excruciatingly difficult,
(43:03):
especially in our country, to dobusiness.
Everybody knows this.
I wish it was easier, but it'sdifficult and, by the way, it's
no different in many, many othercountries in the world.
You just have to havepersistence and grit to get that
done.
Speaker 2 (43:17):
Yeah, on that note, nari, just before we wrap for
today, maybe some of yourlooking back and some of your
key takeaways and advice for theyounger version of yourself or
for new entrepreneurs startingout, what would you?
I mean, you had some goldennuggets right now, but generally
, so, yeah, for me it's thethree Ps.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
It is literally passion, persistence and
profitability.
Pay attention to the money.
And everybody, by the way, saysdon't quit.
I think that's largely correct,right, even though there are so
many times in your life youwanted to say you know, screw it
, it's just too much, I justcan't do this anymore, there's
no money, um, it is too much ofpressure, I just don't want to
do this anymore.
(43:58):
But those are the moments whenyou decide and say stay on right
, I have this, this, this deepbelief.
I'm not religious, I'm spiritual, but I call it the hand of god.
And my, my, uh, my belief hasalways been this that if you're
fighting every day in thetrenches, fighting the good
fight, a light will appear thateffectively shows you and says
(44:21):
that's the direction that you go.
And I think the one saying thathas kind of guided me through
troubled waters was a sayingfrom Narayan Ramachandran, my
mentor and a good friend, and hesaid entrepreneurship is about
being in business long enoughtill the lightning bolt strikes
and you have no idea which wayyou're going to go.
(44:42):
You think you're going to gothere, and I remember telling
myself and saying oh, by the way, when I go, it's going to be
choppy waters and I'm going tobe in a boat and it's going to
be tough.
What the reality of that was isit wasn't a boat, it's a
coracle, it's choppy waters andyou're spinning as you're going
down these choppy waters and youhave no idea where you're going
(45:04):
.
But just kind of figure it out,be there, stick with it, it'll
all work out.
And India is the 10-year rule.
Any business that is built,it's going to take 10 years to
build.
Speaker 2 (45:13):
Yeah, no, it's absolutely true.
And look, thanks, so muchAmazing words to end on, and
look forward to seeing theprogress of Geist over the
coming years.
Congratulations for everythingyou've done here.
Speaker 3 (45:30):
Dear listeners, thank you for listening to this
episode of the podcast.
Subscribe now on your favoritepodcast app for free and you'll
be the first one to know whennew episodes are available.
Just search for Prime VenturePartners Podcast in Apple
Podcast, spotify, castbox orhowever.
You get your podcasts, then hitsubscribe and if you have
(45:51):
enjoyed the show, we would bereally grateful if you leave us
a review on Apple podcast.
To read the full transcript,find the link in the show notes.
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