Buoyed by success in India, homegrown cocktail mixer start-up Jimmy’s Cocktails plans to enter global markets, including Australia, Africa and West Asia, even as it eyes expansion in the domestic market.
The firm, which has raised almost $1.5 million so far, is looking to raise $4-5 million more to fund international expansion as well as augment manufacturing capabilities, founder Ankur Bhatia said in an interview. “Cocktail mixers are a fairly nascent category. We have set our sights beyond India with a long-term objective of building a global brand out of India,” he said.
He added that the mixers as a category in India was estimated to have a potential market size of about ₹2,500 crore pre-COVID, however, since then home occasions have seen a rise due to which market size could be much larger now.
“In the coming months, we are looking at distribution arrangements in other countries part of Indian Subcontinent, Africa, Middle East, South East Asia as well as Australia. We should be shortly available in our first few outlets in Australia. We are also planning to expand our reach to the top 5,000 modern trade outlets within this financial year,” Mr. Bhatia said.
The company, which began operation in 2019, clocked $1 million in sales revenue in its first year of operations. Currently, its products are available in over 20 cities including Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Bengaluru, Goa, Chennai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chandigarh and Guwahati.
“In less than a year, we have served over a million cocktail mixers across India and are available in over 2,000 retail outlets. The pandemic also pushed us to accelerate our online channel sales program. Setting up full-fledged D2C operations amid an unforeseen and unprecedented crisis was extremely challenging. However, in the last 12 months, we have delivered our cocktails to almost 400 cities and D2C now contributes to 40% of our total revenue,” he added.
Mr. Bhatia further added that the company intends to add more variants to the current mixers range as well as introduce other innovative products that will fit seamlessly with this consumption occasion.
Asked about the manufacturing facility, he added that currently the manufacturing is operational at a third-party facility in Nashik, which is exclusive to Jimmy’s Cocktail. “We prefer to remain asset light and are not looking to invest in our own manufacturing unit for now. However, we manage all critical operational processes like supply chain, QC and R&D in house. In fact, all our current flavours have been developed in house,” he said.
Asked about revenue expectations for the current year, he said that the company is looking at a business of about $4 million, or ₹28 crore, a 4x growth over previous financial year. “However, the second COVID wave has hit us due to the impact on retail sales on account of lockdowns and personal caution at an all time high. Our online business continues to grow very fast and as markets open up and consumer confidence to step back into retail improves, we are looking at achieving our targets comfortably.”
Published - July 03, 2021 10:51 pm IST
