Bira

The brand that taught India to drink craft For most of independent India's history, beer meant one of two things — a strong lager you drank for the alcohol content, or an imported bottle you paid a premium for. There was very little in between, and almost nothing made at home that anyone described as interesting. Bira 91 changed that. Founded in 2015 by Ankur Jain, B9 Beverages set out to build India's first genuine craft beer brand. Jain had come to it sideways — he'd been importing and distributing foreign beers in Delhi and noticed something odd in the order books. Indians were buying wheat beers and white ales in volumes nobody had predicted. The demand was there. The domestic supply wasn't. So he built it. What made it work The beer was good. But plenty of good beer never leaves the brewery. What Bira 91 got right was everything around the liquid. The monkey — cheerful, slightly unhinged, impossible to ignore — became one of the most recognisable mascots in Indian FMCG. The bottles looked like they belonged to a younger, more urban India than the labels sitting next to them on the shelf. The name itself carried a story: bira from the Hindi for brother, 91 for India's country code. It was youth-focused positioning executed with unusual discipline, and it landed. Within a few years Bira 91 was on tap in bars across Gurgaon, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Pune, and had built the kind of consumer recall that most beverage brands spend decades chasing. The investors who backed it That recall attracted serious money. Kirin Holdings, the Japanese brewing giant behind Kirin Ichiban, took a stake — a meaningful validation for a brand less than a decade old. Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital India) came in on the venture side. Sofina, the Belgian investment house with a long record in consumer brands, joined too. By FY24, B9 Beverages was reporting sales of around ₹638 crore, per its latest MCA filings. Where it stands today The last two years have been considerably harder. B9 Beverages accumulated losses of approximately ₹1,000 crore in the most recent year, and the company entered a prolonged dispute with its shareholders and lenders. Production has been suspended. Bira 91 has been largely out of circulation for roughly a year. In July 2026, that dispute reached a resolution. Under a settlement: Founder Ankur Jain exited the company's board, bringing the two-year standoff with investors and lenders to a close. The promoter family gave up executive powers, with Jain absolved of the personal liabilities he had accumulated — including personal guarantees against company borrowings. B9 Beverages will undergo recapitalisation with its existing investors. Operations may resume over the next three to six months. Separately, the company's board — led by Anicut Capital — and its investors have begun approaching family offices, corporates and private equity firms to sell the Jain family's 17.8% stake. Parties reported to have been approached include Varun Beverages, Burman Family Office, Simba Craft Beer, DS Group, Muthoot Family Office, Hero Corp and Murugappa Group. The initial funding required to restart operations is estimated at around ₹500 crore. What comes next Bira 91's situation is unusual in one specific way. Most distressed consumer companies have a broken balance sheet and a broken brand. Bira 91 has only the first. The equity is still there — the recall, the shelf identity, the association with a category it effectively created in India. That's the asset the current process is built around, and it's why the buyer conversations involve names with real distribution muscle rather than liquidators. Whether it converts depends on the harder part: clearing the litigations, settling employee dues and cleaning up the liabilities that currently sit on the books. Any deal, by most accounts, hinges on exactly that. The monkey isn't gone. It's waiting on a balance sheet.