More statistics on Wine and the Indian Liquor Market
The Financial Times recently ran an informative article on the state of the Indian wine industry. Most interesting was how they compared the wine business to the broader liquor market in India. Here are some of the numbers highlighted from it.
Indians consumed more than 220 million cases of beer and other spirits in 2006. The market grew by 10%. Indian made foreign liquor (whiskey, gin, rum and vodka) accounted for half the market. Beer dominated with 90% of the rest of the market.
Wines grew at nearly 25% but in comparison to whiskey where 60 million cases were sold, wines sales were only 650,000 cases. The whiskey market, like wine is one of the fastest growing in the world.
It costs around the Rs10-15 million mark to set up a wine plant with a capacity of 1 lakh litres and as a result many an entreprenuer is jumping in. Low volumes and high marketing costs are more of a concern as Sommelier India contributor, Magandeep Singh highlighted in the article.
47% of the imported wines are French largely thanks to the strong efforts of Sopexa. Italian wines are growing at a rate of 30% per year in India.
And based on a Business Standard story, the Indian wine market 4.6 million litres in volume terms and Rs 450 crore in value terms. The market is expected to grow to 8.3 million litres by 2010. Nearly 80 per cent of wine sales are accounted for by the major cities, especially New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Pune and Bangalore.
Around 63 per cent of the volume sales of wine are through off-trade channel in five-star hotels, pubs and bar-restaurants.
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