An avid tea lover, Siddharth Jain’s passion for tea prompted him to introduce to the Indian market its first real-brewed bottled ice tea brand, Brewhouse. His firm, Positive Food Ventures Pvt Ltd, New Delhi, launched it to popularise a home-grown healthy alternative to the bottled beverages that are often laced with preservatives, chemicals and artificial ingredients.
An alumnus of Delhi University and the IIM-Calcutta, he joined as an M&A banker with BNP Paribas in Singapore. After six years, he returned to India to launch his beverage venture in May 2017, and funding quickly followed. With chai so popular in India, almost a national beverage, success followed quickly. From 2,000 points of sale within a year, he is gearing to increase the number to 10,000 by 2019. Excerpts:
What prompted you to think of bottled ice tea?
Increasing popularity of green and black tea, particularly among health-conscious people, youngsters and the corporate world, spurred the idea of ice tea.
How different is your ice tea from other beverages?
The Brewhouse brand offer India’s first and only real-brewed bottled tea with 50-70 per cent less sugar content than most carbonated and juice-based drinks. It has only 6-6.5 per cent sugar and contains no preservatives, chemicals or artificial ingredients.
Did you get any funding for expansion of business and brand?
Yes. In November 2017, we got investment of $6,00,000 (₹4.26 crore) and then, in September 2018, a loan of $2 million (₹14.21 crore). This funding from Singapore-based Food Empire Holdings is the first such investment by them in the Indian food and beverage industry.
In how many flavors is the Brewhouse ice tea available at present?
At present, we offer four flavours: peach, lemon, honey mint and citrus green. These are available in 350 ml glass bottles. We are also working on different sizes and packaging options for our expansion.
What makes your ice tea special?
Other beverages use powder or concentrates for making ice tea. Ours is different as we procure tea leaf directly from producers in Assam, Darjeeling and the Nilgiris. We transport this raw tea in leaf form — which is never more than two month old — to our brewing plant near Ghaziabad. The brewed tea is immediately cooled, bottled and marketed.
Where is this bottled ice tea available at present?
Like other FMCG companies, we also supply our products through retail chain outlets. At present, we have about 2,000 such points of sale in Delhi, Bengaluru, Chennai, Lucknow, Jaipur and Chandigarh. It will soon be available in Mumbai, Pune, Goa and Kolkata. By the end of 2019, we plan to expand to nearly 10,000 points of sale across India.