Fortune India Exclusive: Can Ankur Jain save Bira 91?

Early this year, Bira 91 turned 10. This was a big milestone for the home-grown beer brand, which was born with a pony-sized dream of conquering one small Delhi neighbourhood in 2015. A decade later, the ‘David’ is no longer a half-pint in an alcobev arena ruled by ‘Goliaths’ such as Heineken, Carlsberg, AB InBev, and Kingfisher. With its funky monkey, riotous colours, bold flavours, irreverent marketing, and an audacious global swagger, Bira 91 didn’t just enter the market; it rewrote the rules and captured the imagination of young hopheads.

So, when it turned 10, the young brand decided to celebrate a decade of unfiltered and unapologetic success.

Founder Ankur Jain uncapped his full-bodied passion for the craft and love for the business by writing a long, effervescent letter addressed to consumers, employees, shareholders, business partners, stakeholders, and yes, his stout investors. “It is fair to say that until a few years ago,” Jain reckoned in his 10^th anniversary note penned in February, “the beer category was associated with only two adjectives: cold and strong.” Jain went on to claim that he added a third word in the Indian beer vocabulary of the consumers: taste.

Nine months later, another word forces its way in: resilience.

Saddled with enormous debt, Jain borrows once more—this time from American writer and humourist Mark Twain. “The reports of our death are greatly exaggerated,” says the 45-year-old, guffawing. There have been conjectures and premature obituaries about the apparently impending doom of B9 Beverages, the parent company of Bira 91.

Jain, though, is not perturbed. “Our demise has been consistently and erroneously predicted every year. There is nothing new in the news,” he tells Fortune India with a swagger that has defined his entrepreneurial journey, which has been dotted with formidable challenges since 2015. 

This time, however, there is something new—and alarming—about the ‘exaggerated’ news and the new set of adversaries.

An existential crisis

First, B9 Beverages is facing an existential crisis. Last month, its largest institutional shareholder Kirin and biggest lender Anicut took control of its subsidiary The Beer Café by claiming shares pledged by B9 Beverages. If losing control of its wholly-owned arm was disconcerting, mounting debt and accumulated losses also don’t spell good news for the beer maker that has been out of production—and business—for more than three months. As of March 31, 2025, B9 Beverages had accumulated losses and debt of ₹1,900 crore and ₹965 crore, respectively.

Second, Jain is staring down a mutiny from hundreds of employees, who are demanding his ouster. In a petition to investors, they have reportedly alleged ‘corporate governance failure, lack of transparency, and delays in employee dues and salaries’.

Third, the company is in dire need of emergency capital. There is none, though. While there have been reports that the existing investors may infuse fresh funds contingent on Jain stepping down from, the needle is yet to move more than two months since the ‘capital-infusion talks’. “I have been made a scapegoat,” says Jain. “Har movie main ek villain chahiye. (Every movie needs a villain). And the easiest villain today is Ankur,” he says.

Amidst such a gloomy scenario, being ‘delusional’ can be handy, says Jain. “Even today, if you ask me about what can be done with this brand, my reply would still be that this brand can be restored and won,” he says, underlining his unflinching optimism. “We can build a brand much bigger than Corona if we get a chance,” he says in this exclusive interaction with Fortune India.

The bigger question, though, is: does he have a chance? If the existing investors reportedly lose confidence in the captain, who will give Jain one last chance to claw back and prove that the story isn’t over yet?

Fighting back

Jain knows he needs only one person to buy his story. And that person happens to be Ankur Jain. “I am not a quitter. I will fight and revive the brand,” he says, sharing a string of steps he has taken over the past 12 months to bring the business back on track. From stemming the financial freefall to curbing his aggressive expansion streak to cost control and optimisation, Jain claims that his efforts have started to yield results.

Take, for instance, losses. From a staggering loss of ₹751.7 crore in FY24, the numbers have plunged to ₹585 crore in FY25, he claims. During the same period, the fixed cost has been trimmed from ₹484.1 crore to ₹369.5 crore, while headcount has been cut by 60%, from 900 to 374. Plus, there’s been a slew of other measures, including optimisation of the sales force, pruning of marketing spends, change in operating model to contract manufacturing across two breweries, and reduction in capacity from 25 million cases to 15 million cases. A direct fallout has been a dip in revenue: from ₹681.1 crore in FY24 to ₹507.1 crore in FY25.

Jain is not perturbed by sagging revenue. Reason? The urgent need is to stabilise operations and steady the ship. A critical element of the revival plan is to shun the pan-India dream for now, exit 11 states, and bring the footprint down to 16 states. “We will focus sharply on five key states of Delhi, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra,” he says. “SKU rationalisation is also in place: from 383 in FY25 to 125 in FY26,” he adds.

But what about fresh funds? You can’t revive the company without cash. Jain claims he is aggressively working on that front too. “I am in the midst of negotiating​ a structured debt of $70 million. I have signed a term sheet, and the process should be over in a few weeks,” he claims. There is also a blueprint to raise $50 million in equity during this fiscal, as well as another $50 million next year.

Notwithstanding a revival blueprint and his zeal, all efforts will come to a nought if the ‘internal chaos’ is not fixed.

B9 Beverages, point out a bunch of investors and industry observers, is a bitterly divided house. “There are sets of investors who have made things tricky,” says one venture capitalist, who declined to be named. On one hand, there is strategic investor Kirin Holdings, which is already in talks to exit Bira 91. “A strategic investor, by its very definition, is a long-term player. Imagine a situation when such an investor prefers debt and not equity,” says Jain, alluding to the move by the Japanese investor to invest in debt in the last funding round of Bira 91 in 2024. Kirin, he claims, has written down its entire debt and equity in February this year. The Japanese investor, it is believed, has been negotiating an exit since August. A questionnaire mailed to Kirin officials has yet to elicit a response.

If Kirin is in exit mode, then so is Peak XV, which reportedly owns a 15% stake in the company. “The last time Peak XV invested in B9 Beverages was in 2020,” says another investor, requesting not to be named, adding that the aggregate amount of investment made by the VC fund in the company stands at ₹300 crore. “Ankur has already given them back ₹200 crore,” the investor says, adding, “Another lender, Anicut, claimed it was arranging funds but there is nothing on the ground yet.” The investor adds, “So, I don’t know how Ankur would manage to clean the cap table and replace them with new investors.” Peak XV and Anicut are yet to respond to questionnaires emailed by Fortune India.

In hindsight

Jain, meanwhile, is confident of clearing the cap table. A crisis, he underlines, nudges people to do things that they would have never done. “Who would have imagined that I would have offered to step down in September if the existing investors could manage to get funds,” he asks. “Had I done that seven months ago? No,” he says. Crisis, interestingly, also presents an opportunity to introspect. “It makes you aware of the mistakes you’ve made in partner selection, business operations or in trusting people a lot more than one should have,” he says.

One big mistake—changing the name of the company to meet regulatory compliances—was a byproduct of success. “Every time we raised capital, we allocated a lot of shares to HNIs, employees, family offices and so on,” says Jain. For a private limited company, the deemed number of shareholders is 200. B9 Beverages exceeded that limit and, consequently, had to drop ‘private’ from its name. The change triggered a regulatory tsunami. The company had to re-register manufacturing licences, wholesale distribution licences and do product registrations all over again. Twenty-seven states, 27 sets of laws, and one big problem: uncertainty. Result? A six-month disruption in business and a massive amount of write-off. “In hindsight, maybe we could have done things slightly better,” he says.

The disruption triggered financial turmoil for the company, and the knives are out for the founder. “If success is all yours, then failure too is yours,” says one of the employees who has not received their salary for five months.

A few external factors—such as changes in liquor policy and volatility in key states like Delhi and Andhra Pradesh last year—too resulted in a fall in sales. “Beer volume dropped by 50% last year,” says Jain. Disruption of the company’s business and cash flow for several months hampered its fundraising prospects. “We were planning to raise capital but couldn’t,” he rues.

Industry observers also point out a few more factors that might have contributed to the present crisis.

First, Jain aggressively expanded in the domestic as well as overseas markets. It resulted in piling up of fixed costs. After 2019, the company expanded its capacity from 300,000 cases per month to 2 million cases a month. “There was demand, and supply had to be built,” says Jain, justifying the move.

Second, marketing budgets ballooned as high-profile tie-ups were inked such as one with the International Cricket Council (ICC). Third, Bira started as a craft beer brand and then entered into the mass market category. “The idea was to address almost 80-90% of the India market rather than just target the top 5%,” says Jain, who backed his instinct, and commissioned two of his big breweries in the second half of 2019. “All of us know what happened in 2020. Covid battered us,” he recalls. Meanwhile, some also blame the mercurial behaviour of the founder in not paying heed to caution. The company, they point out, paid a price for hyper-aggression.

What next?

Jain, for his part, points out three major mistakes, and learning. “We should have exercised more financial prudence and discipline,” he reckons. Second, the company should have relied less on a small set of investors. The costliest mistake, he says, was trusting people too much. “All three mistakes have one common thread: they are mistakes of hope and optimism,” he says.

But isn’t there a ‘mistake’ in perception? He has been accused of being a control freak. Is that not something that he would like to change? Jain sinks into silence for a few seconds. “I am the same person,” he says. “Now the company is not performing, so I have become a control freak,” he smiles. Tomorrow, if it revives, “then people would say he was a control-freak, so he pulled it off”.

So, can we expect an amicable resolution? “Nothing is impossible,” says an existing investor close to the matter. “Ideally, this should not have resulted in a conflict,” adds the investor, requesting anonymity. The logic is simple, this investor explains. There is a strategic investor who wants to exit; there is a lender who wants to recover its capital; and there is a founder who wants to make this happen. For a brand like Bira 91, the investor underlines, there are many strategic investors who are keen to put in capital. “Someone needs to make all parties sit in a room along with their lawyers and thrash things out. A solution is definitely possible.”

But is a solution realistically possible or delusionally possible? Jain flashes an enigmatic smile. “I am an all-in guy. I have poured my heart, soul, blood, and tears into building Bira 91. And I have done so with unimpeachable integrity,” he claims, adding that the only asset he owns is his shares in Bira 91. “Neither me nor my family own a house or any assets besides this,” he says. Jain asserts that he happens to be one of the few founders who has borrowed money, provided a substantial exit to one of its early institutional investors and capitalised on every opportunity to increase ownership in the company. “In an environment when everyone has abandoned ship, including institutional, strategic investors and lenders, I stand firm in my resolve to find a solution,” he says, without flinching.

Though he admits that it hurts to be dubbed as the man responsible for all the problems, Jain reckons that people have short memories. “Today I am maligned. Until two years ago, I was celebrated. Going ahead, people might write our resurrection story,” he signs off.