Pradeep Gidwani’s new beer venture is anything but pint-sized.
Pradeep Gidwani was thrilled when he saw a couple with a baby in a stroller in his six-month-old café. Parents with infants in cafés are hardly an uncommon sight — but it is when you consider Gidwani’s café in the Capital serves not coffee and doughnuts but over 40 kinds of beer from different parts of the globe. For the 46-year-old former managing director of Carlsberg India, it was the ultimate affirmation that the concept behind The Beer Café was working — of creating a space for beer that would be far removed from the usual dimly-lit bars, where one could have a drink without feeling he or she was doing something “wrong”. “I wanted to take a photograph,” says Gidwani.
The enthusiasm is understandable — after having spent over 20 years in the beverages and alcohol sector, The Beer Café, located in Ambience Mall in south Delhi, is Gidwani’s first entrepreneurial venture. The trigger, funnily enough, came from another “baby”. When Gidwani took over as the managing director of Fosters in 2000, he pretty much had to build the brand in India from scratch and with local funds as the company was bleeding heavily in the rest of Asia. After completing what seemed like a Herculean task came the bolt from the blue: the company was exiting the beer business globally. “So there I was, making presentations to potential buyers, having to sell the baby I’d built with my own hands. That was the turning point,” he says.
The switch did not come immediately though. Following the sale of Fosters in 2006, he headed to Dubai to launch Red Bull in different parts of Asia. He then returned to India to launch Carlsberg here, his umpteenth association with a startup (which includes stints with Diageo and Moet Hennessy). “I had built quite a few businesses, had seen how the business was valuated. It was only a matter of time before I got out and did something of my own,” he says. He quit Carlsberg in January 2010 with the idea of doing something with beer. That’s when Rahul Singh, former executive director of Reebok India and an acquaintance, told him of the “attractive” space up for grabs in Ambience Mall and suggested they do something there. That “something” became Beer Café, which opened as a 50:50 joint venture between the two on December 10, 2010.
“We want to make this the Starbucks of beer, not just in India but all over the world,” says Gidwani, who’s dressed in a shirt of the same pale yellow as his Beer Café. The café, which serves Stella Artois and Hoegaarden on tap as well as pints of other exotic beers such as India Pale Ale and Leffe, has reached operational breakeven and the owners are looking to expand to 50 outlets by 2014, including a few abroad. Surrounded by beer, he is hard put to name any one favourite though he confesses to having had his first sip of it at the ripe old age of three, when he told the waiter serving his father and uncle, “Mere liye bhi ek laana (get one for me as well).”
Like for most others in the business, the high taxes and government policies are a big grouse. “India’s a hot country for most of the year, there’s a consumer boom happening and our spicy food is paired very well with beer — in short, all the drivers for growth are there. It’s the high taxes and ridiculous government policies that are shackling the growth of the beer industry,” he says, pointing to the example of China where a 650 ml bottle of beer costs as little as Rs 8.
Gidwani’s only regret so far is not getting enough time to spend with his three-year-old daughter, Avantika, which had been one of his priorities when he quit Carlsberg. His wife, a senior advertising executive, has quit to be a full-time mom. It has also been four years since he took a holiday, though he says he loves “interesting travelling” — favourite trips include steering a boat for a week through France’s picturesque wine country.
Considering The Beer Café’s ambitious expansion plans, it seems unlikely that Gidwani will be holidaying anytime soon. But it’s also equally unlikely that you’ll catch the passionate entrepreneur complaining about it.
