Making Seltzer find its place

For Anish Reddy who established the start-up Pursue Hard Seltzer, the choice lay between following the path laid down by his family in the alcohol bottling business or carving out his own path, albeit in the same industry. He chose the latter and this led to setting up a plant in Goa to produce and bottle hard seltzer, which, he says, is slowly turning into a favourite tipple for the young generation of alcoholic beverage consumers. Now, with the set-up in place, Anish is focusing on making hard seltzer a ‘popular’ drink across the country.

Coming from a business family that has been involved in the production and distribution of alcoholic beverages in South India since the 1980s, it seemed but natural for Anish Reddy, to foray into this field. However, not content with simply carrying the legacy forward, Anish decided to try something new. “We were always in the business of franchise and contract bottling for brands. I joined the business in 2020 and felt that the time was ripe to launch our own brands in new categories,” he informs. Pursue Hard Seltzer was one of India’s first hard seltzer launches.

Role in Shaping Culture

The brand has won many accolades for taste and design and is now recognised as India’s best hard seltzer overall. This is why Anish is excited about catering to the growing market for easy-to-drink, low-calorie alcoholic beverages in the country.

The motivation to launch a new brand came from his belief that alcohol drives culture which influences different generations in different ways. “If you take my generation, you will see that we are experiential. The gin boom in the 2010s and now the tequila boom are all driven by culture, influence and experimentation. To play a role in shaping culture was a big driver for me,” he states.

Innovative Category

Hard seltzers were launched in the early 2010s in the US and took the country by storm in 2018. Since then, it has been gaining global acceptance.

Hard seltzer is a massive category in the alcoholic beverage space in the west which is now seeing growth in parts of Asia. Anish was keen on delivering a product that would be of international grade and top-notch in quality and design. “We wanted to launch a global seltzer that we could be proud of,” he says. Their aim is to continue expanding in multiple states and markets in India and also start exporting to South-east Asia, the Middle East and Australia.

“I personally witnessed consumers enjoying the beverage given its low calorie level, little to no sugar and, most importantly, packing the same amount of alcohol as lager beer i.e. about 4.8- 5 percent. The buzz you get from a hard seltzer is very different to the one you get from beer. Beer also contains more calories and more sugars in the form of carbohydrate content. For us, it was an innovative category and one we felt we can champion in India,” Anish observes. The move was also driven by the fact that the new-age consumers in the alcohol consumption space in India have higher disposable income and are willing to try new products.

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