Woman Who Are Stirring Up The Alcohol Space

The spirit market is no longer a male dominated market, with a lot of vivacious women carving their niche in the market. Whatever you poison is, don’t be surprised if it ahs been brewed by a woman. These new liquor entrepreneurs are setting the standards high for the market to explore options. 

Here are few who top the game. 

With a background of having worked at the creative helm of large companies like Penguin Publishing and Sesame Street, she has always got the team to think big, even when it was just a company of three people. In Aparajita’s word As a Gin company, our entire world revolves around distillation and the first thing to know about distillation is that there are three parts to it – The head, the heart and the tail. Her approach to design comes with a focus on functionality over pure aesthetics and a keen eye on the future, where these brands will need to be relevant. This thinking has reflected in both the brands of Gin – GREATER THAN and HAPUSA – she has designed from ground up. They are both distinctive and fit the requirements of the product given its intended use. Aparajita loves the brands she has created and yet is their harshest critic, a fact that makes sure they are always evolving and improving, just like the company as a whole and the people behind it.

Kasturi Banerjee, Founder of Stilldistilling Spirits

Stilldistilling Spirits is a small, homegrown, Indian, independent distillery that serves up ‘micro-marvels’ of Maka Zai rum. What started out as an internship, born out of passion, has now led to a new career path for Kasturi Banerjee. With a keen interest in wine and spirits, she pursued a bartending course in 2019 to better understand the art of mixology. Through this experience and her genuine curiosity, Kasturi started to understand the history of the alco-bev industry in India. She then started to experiment with blends, do more research to further understand the emerging trends in the sector, changing consumer preferences, etc. This led to identifying a market opportunity in the premium rum category. With a vision to elevate drinking experiences, she set up Stilldistilling Spiritsin 2020, a homegrown manufacturing and blending company that produces Maka Zai – a premium craft rum out of Goa. Maka Zai has two variants – White & Gold. Known to be gregarious you can find Kasturi out and about meeting new people or trying out new blends and mixes in her downtime

Ms Sakshi Saigal, Co Founder, Stranger and Sons

Sakshi Saigal has successfully navigated the complex Liquor industry as a women entrepreneur and is putting India on the global map as the fastest growing and innovative craft gin industry. While studying Spain Sakshi got curious about Gin as Spain is known for their Gin bars. After researching and working on it for a year, in 2018, Stranger and Sons came into existence and it is one the first of a kind craft gin to start the whole gin revolution. Starting out as early innovators in the

Indian gin landscape to being declared one of the 8 best gins in the world by the International Wine and Spirit Competition. Sakshi believes that the The Gin market in India is nascent but growing rapidly! There has been a shift driven by consumers leaning towards more creative choices. Today, we see that a lot of Indian consumers are excited to try a good homegrown product without it feeling like a compromise. 

Priyanka Save, Hill Zill Wines Pvt. Ltd.,

The brains behind the World's First Chikoo Wine, Priyanka after After working for a couple of years in the US she decided to call it quits and came back to India for good. Being a farmer's daughter and seeing wastage of chikoo on her farm she started experimenting with the fruit and finally narrowed on the idea of making Alco-Bev from Chikoo due to its natural fermenting quality. Fruzzanté is on a mission to help farmers through their venture and hence they work directly with the farmers and keep the brand sustainable.