In the global market, ecommerce sales for alcohol typically make up about 2 to 3 per cent. China being one of the leads and has reached around 10 per cent, showcasing significant growth. However, in India, ecommerce for alcohol is still very far from it, said Atul Kumar Singh, Co-Founder & MD, Lone Wolf in an exclusive conversation with BW Retail World.
“We’ve started exploring ecommerce, especially during the Covid times when it helped with social distancing. However, it’s been a challenge due to varying state policies,” he said.
Some states like West Bengal allowed food delivery platforms like Swiggy and Zomato handle alcohol deliveries, while others are experimenting with their own systems, he underlined.
“Maharashtra even allows local retailers to deliver via WhatsApp orders. Each state has a different approach, so there’s no uniform way for e-commerce in the alcohol industry,” Singh added.
Furthermore, Singh mentioned the two categories of beer market, “The entire retail market for alcobev, especially beer, is divided into two categories.”
“We can say almost 85 per cent of the market is for strong beer and the remaining 15 per cent goes towards your mix of flour and other variants of craft beer etc. So strong beer, irrespective of whichever part of the country you are in, pretty much dominates the entire beer market,” the MD explained.
Recently, the beer brand introduced its two new variants, Alpha and Mavrick and these two new variants are expected to contribute at least 20 per cent of brand’s revenue for the current financial year.
Looking ahead, the company is aiming to close its revenue to about Rs 50 crore for this financial year.
