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Business
Varuni Khosla

Ronin Wines, makers Moonshine mead, raises $2 million from Anthill, others

Rohan Rehani and Nitin Vishwas, Co-founders, Ronin Wines.

Prasad Vanga, partner, Anthill Ventures, said, “Meads are a fast-growing alco-bev category. This company has created a mead brand that’s seeing good market traction from discerning consumers looking for new tastes and flavours." With this infusion of funds, the company aims to expand its presence in its existing markets like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Goa, Uttar Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan, Assam and Silvassa and enter new markets like Haryana and West Bengal. The company said it will take the brand national over the next three years and will look at exports. Meads in India are low alcohol by volume and carbonated beverages. They compete with beer and ready-to-drink alcohols. This company was established in 2016 in Pune. In 2021, the company also launched a strong mead variant to get into the high alcohol-by-volume still-meads segment.Nitin Vishwas, the company’s co-founder, said, “This is our first set of institutional investors. Anthill Capital in particular already has a strong alco-bev portfolio and a very keen understanding of the alco-bev space in India and we are eager to gain from their learnings with other alco-bev startups. While meads might be a separate category legally, we make meads which are predominantly low alcohol and carbonated, often with a hint of nostalgia which has often found them competing with beers and ready-to-drink alcohols."“This switch in consumer preferences is happening because our meads are designed for the Indian palate - flavourful and not bitter, and so unlike beer, our meads don’t have to be an acquired taste."Rohan Rehani, co-founder of the firm, added, “This fund raise will enable us to unlock opportunities not only at the national but also at the international level."

The company had initially invested about 55 lakh and subsequently raised about $2 million from known investors.India alcoholic beverages markets had a size of $52.5 billion in 2020 and it is expected to grow at a CAGR of 6.8% between 2020 and 2023, according to the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations.

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