Rain, Rain, Make Gin!
When entrepreneur Mayukh Hazarika decided to venture into the alcoholic beverage space and create a craft gin product that would come to be known as much for its high quality as sustainability, he chose to make it in Cherrapunji, a place where it rains in sheets. Now, Cherrapunji Eastern Craft Gin, produced by Raincheck Earth (P) Limited, is becoming increasingly popular for its absolutely different taste that is derived from using pure rainwater.
Cherrapunji, a high-altitude town in Meghalaya, has always been synonymous with an extraordinarily high amount of rainfall. One can also expect it to be known for Cherrapunji Eastern Craft Gin in the future. The gin is produced by Raincheck Earth (P) Limited, a venture that was floated in 2022. The biggest USP of this brand is that it is made with purified rainwater. As the company’s CEO Mayukh Hazarika describes it, “One of the biggest highlights of our product is that native botanicals from north- east India are procured to make the product along with rainwater.”
It is also the first Indian alcoholic beverage manufacturer to use SS 304 stainless steel bottles for packaging. This makes Cherrapunji Eastern Craft Gin bottles 70 percent lighter than your average glass bottles. They also last for a long period of more than 10 years. “We are recognised by the Department of Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade (DPIIT) because we are successfully using rainwater to make spirits,” Hazarika states. Their gin formula has been designed in collaboration with a master distiller in The Netherlands, which is considered the home of gin and genever. Incidentally, the brand won the Global Spirits Master ‘Master 2023’ title within eight weeks of its launch.
Making it Sustainable
The company’s focus is on reducing energy consumption by 70 percent using advanced machinery to create reusable steel bottles instead of glass ones. This objective also invited its own set of unique challenges, including defining a supply chain. However, the company stuck to its guns and was successful in entering the market with a mission-driven high-quality craft spirit made with sustainable methods. “We aim to be carbon-neutral by the end of 2024,” Hazarika says. Interestingly, gin is the kind of product that facilitates the signature of the place to be imprinted into the liquid.
Further, the choice of having the factory in North-east India was also a calculated move by Raincheck Earth (P) Limited. “The north-east region of India is richly bio-diverse and the botanicals available here can be classified as rare and exotic. We use GI-tagged mandarin and lemon peels from the region along with other botanicals to give the product a dimension which has not been done before. Coupled with rainwater, these botanicals come to life when had as a simple sipping gin or with high quality tonic water. And given the interest of the consumer in this category, it seemed just right for us as a start-up,” Hazarika elaborates.
