Moonshine Meads

What’s the real challenge with raising institutional investments for consumer brands in India, especially in the alcobev sector? If we received a 1000 Rs for every time we got told by a potential investor - “I love your product and what you guys have achieved, but the mead market is too niche” - we wouldn’t need to raise any money because we’d have so much. :D The funniest feedback we have received from a VC, was “if you guys even plan to build any other consumer brand, I’ll back it, but since I don’t like sweet beverages, I can’t back you” Hyperbole and anecdotes apart, I find it amusing (read: baffling) when investors question our TAM (total addressable market) And this is why -    1. Yes, the global market for meads is very small. A few minutes on google will tell you that. World over, meads are mostly wine like - ~12% abc, non carbonated, packaged like a wine and more often than not - quite sweet.   2. The way we make Moonshine Meads is very different. 4.5% to 6.5% abv, carbonated, packaged like a beer and semi sweet - almost like a wheat beer. And so, the consumer set we’re approaching is predominantly a beer and RTD (like Breezer) drinking consumer.    3. In fact, market research has shown that our source of volume is equally from mild beer and RTDs.    4. And so logically, if we’re sourcing consumers from both beer and RTDs, the TAM is much much larger than wine-like-meads. Further, as a company, we’re also building out a larger portfolio to upgrade consumers across various other alcobev sectors. We have brands in various stages of development which will pull from other categories - wines (premium, rosé’s, port), strong RTD’s and even strong beer! All of this on a base of honey mead - which means - we’re also supporting beekeepers and so, indirectly supporting agriculture through pollination with every bottle we make! Since we can conclude that TAM isn't the real reason for a 'no', what do you think the reason really is? Help demystify this for Nitin Vishwas and I!

We have a singular Jamun tree within the Moonshine Meads premises in Pirangut, Pune. And every year, the tree fruits towards the beginning of June and we harvest the jamun to make a super small batch of Jamun mead. In the past, this mead has been made available only to team members! This year however, we've put this mead on tap and have made it available to visitors to come to the meadery on Sunday to attend the Picnic at the Hive - a day long thing - great music, great food, GREAT meads! I might be slightly biased about the meads. As with all our other meads, the jamun mead is also 100% all natural - with no artificial colours or flavours and only honey used in the fermentation and for sweetening.