Sequoia invests $8m in India's Bira 91

The company will use the new capital to enter new markets, according to a Livemint story linked from Bira 91’s Twitter feed. B9 currently operates in India and the US and plans to expand into the UK, Singapore, Hong Kong, Thailand and the United Arab Emirates by next year.

In addition, the investment will also support the construction of a new brewery in India. B9’s two existing facilities have a capacity of 4.2 million cases per year; once the new facility is finished the company expects to be able to manufacture 12 million cases per year. It also intends to set up a brewery in the US in the next year.

B9’s founder Ankur Jain previously rain a healthcare start-up in New York before returning to India in 2007. Jain’s first beverage company, Cerana Beverages, was solely an importer of foreign brands. In 2014 Jain hired a brewmaster from Belgium to create Bira 91, which launched the following year.

Sequoia previously invested in B9 last year, leading a INR400 million ($6 million) round aimed at enabling domestic growth and building new production facilities. According to AVCJ Research, TR Capital invested $10 million later that year.

India’s beer market has been estimated at $5 billion, with premium beers – which sell for more than INR100 per liter and include Bira 91, Heineken and Carlsberg – representing about 15% of revenue.

The country’s brewing industry has attracted little interest from VC investors. Besides B9, the only company to see significant investment in the last 10 years is Cobra India Beer, which received $5.4 million from Brahma Capital in 2010 to support its takeover of Iceberg Industries.

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• Topics
• South Asia
• Consumer
• Expansion
• India
• Sequoia Capital
• Growth capital