Startup Deep Dive : Bira 91 — how one name change nearly wiped out India’s craft beer brand

Bira 91 lost ₹748 crore ($77.9 million) in the same year it made ₹638 crore in revenue — a craft beer company that spent more losing money than it earned selling beer. The cause was not a price war with Kingfisher or a bad monsoon.

It was a single word. In December 2023, the founder of India’s best-known craft beer brand dropped “Private” from his company’s name to prepare for a planned IPO, and by his own admission triggered what became a nationwide re-licensing scramble that idled factories, wrote off crores of beer, and left staff waiting months for salaries. Two years on, Bira 91’s biggest investor is trying to leave, and the founder is trying to buy his way back to control. Here is how a brand that once defined “cool” beer in urban India ended up fighting for survival.

Quick facts

What they do

Bira 91 makes and sells beer — a lineup built around its White wheat beer, Blonde lager, the stronger Boom, and a low-calorie Light — positioned as an affordable-premium, design-forward alternative to mass lagers like Kingfisher, aimed at young, urban Indian drinkers who wanted something that felt imported without the import price. It brews at its own facilities in Indore, Madhya Pradesh, and Nagpur, Maharashtra, and until the 2024-25 crisis also ran The Beer Cafe, a bar and taproom chain that was, by multiple accounts, the group’s only reliably profitable business.

The origin

Ankur Jain grew up in Delhi, moved to the United States in 1998, and finished a computer engineering degree at the Illinois Institute of Technology in 2002, followed by a stint at Motorola before he returned to entrepreneurship. His insight on India’s beer shelf was simple: a market of a few dominant, decades-old mass lagers with almost nothing built for a drinker who wanted a “craft” or import-style beer at an everyday price. Bira 91 began in 2015 by importing Belgian craft beer into India to test that appetite, then pivoted into local manufacturing under the “Make in India” push once demand showed up, building its own breweries rather than staying an importer. Jain funded the earliest days with roughly $1.5 million from friends and family before institutional capital arrived.

The struggle years

Bira 91’s growth was never as smooth as its marketing suggested. Two documented setbacks preceded the crisis that nearly ended it.

In FY22, revenue grew to roughly ₹720 crore, but losses spiked 58% year-on-year to around ₹396 crore, a sign that the company was buying growth at a steep and worsening cost even before any external shock hit it. The following year, FY23, losses climbed again, up 12% to ₹445.4 crore even as revenue rose to ₹824.3 crore — scale was improving, but profitability was moving the wrong way.

Then came a geography-specific blow. Delhi was Bira 91’s single largest revenue market, and in 2022 the city’s liquor policy turned chaotic: the Delhi government’s excise policy overhaul and subsequent rollback disrupted official retail alcohol sales across the capital, hitting Bira 91 harder than most because of how concentrated its revenue was there. Neither setback was fatal on its own. Together, they left the company financially stretched and administratively exposed just before its biggest mistake.

The turning point

On one side of the ledger: FY23, a company with ₹824.3 crore in revenue and a loss of ₹445.4 crore, gearing up for an IPO. On the other: FY24, revenue down 22% to ₹638 crore and a loss of ₹748 crore — a loss that exceeded the company’s entire revenue for the year.

What happened in between was, as Jain himself later described it, a “catastrophic administrative oversight.” In December 2023, B9 Beverages Private Limited crossed the 200-shareholder threshold that under Indian company law meant it had to convert to a public limited company, so it dropped “Private” from its name to become B9 Beverages Limited ahead of its planned listing. Alcohol, though, is regulated state by state in India, and every brand label the company sold was registered to its old legal name. The name change meant Bira 91 was, in the eyes of excise authorities in each state, effectively a new entity that needed fresh label approvals and licence re-registrations everywhere it sold. That process was reported to take anywhere from four to eight or nine months, and by several accounts the company had not lined up regulatory approvals before making the change.

The fallout was severe. Production and sales stalled through much of the first half of FY25. The company wrote off roughly ₹80 crore of beer that could no longer be legally sold under the old registrations. A planned ₹500 crore debt infusion from BlackRock reportedly fell through as the crisis deepened. Vendor payments were put on hold for more than four months, and salaries were delayed by three to six months, with total unpaid dues to current and former employees estimated at around ₹50 crore. Headcount, which had stood at 600-700, fell to roughly 200-260 as the company shrank around the crisis. Accumulated losses rose to ₹2,117.98 crore in FY24 from ₹1,473.01 crore a year earlier, and an FY24 audit flagged liabilities exceeding assets by ₹619.6 crore, with auditors citing material uncertainty about the group’s ability to continue as a going concern.

The money behind it

Bira 91’s capital stack tracks its ambitions closely. After the friends-and-family round, Sequoia Capital led a $6 million Series A in 2016 — the firm’s first bet on an Indian alcoholic beverage company, and a signal that helped legitimise “craft beer” as a venture category in India. Sequoia’s successor entity, Peak XV Partners, remains a shareholder today.

In 2018, Belgium’s Sofina invested $50 million alongside existing backers, capital that funded the buildout of Bira 91’s own breweries and a national expansion beyond its early metro strongholds. Japan’s Kirin Holdings entered in February 2021 with $30 million for roughly a 10% stake, then added further tranches that took its holding to about 20-21%, making it Bira 91’s largest single institutional shareholder; across its rounds, Kirin is reported to have put in around $70 million. In March 2024, just as the name-change crisis was breaking, the company raised a further $50 million from Kirin and New York’s Tiger Pacific Capital, at a valuation reported at $600-625 million by some accounts and $550-600 million by others — a range, not a confirmed number, since B9 Beverages has not published an official mark. Data platform Tracxn puts Bira 91’s cumulative funding, across equity, debt and structured rounds, at more than $450 million over 21-plus rounds.

By 2025, the relationship with Kirin had turned adversarial. Kirin and lender Anicut Capital moved to take control of The Beer Cafe — the one part of the group still generating cash — prompting Jain to challenge the takeover in the Delhi High Court. By November 2025, Kirin was reported to be in talks to exit its stake entirely and had engaged EY to explore selling its debt exposure, even as Jain pursued a roughly $100 million equity infusion of his own, alongside a ₹100 crore rights issue, aiming to become the single largest shareholder himself.

How it makes money

Beer in India moves through a three-tier system: a brewer like Bira 91 manufactures and sells to state-run corporations or licensed private distributors, who sell on to retail shops, bars and restaurants, with every state setting its own excise duty, labelling rules and licensing process. A large share of what a drinker pays at the counter is state excise tax, not manufacturing cost or brand margin — which is exactly why the 2024 licensing freeze was so damaging: the company could not simply “keep selling” through the disruption, because the right to sell at all is a state-by-state, label-by-label permission. Bira 91’s own margin sits in premiumisation: revenue per litre rose 15% over two years as the company pushed its mix toward higher-priced formats, and gross margin ran around 66% through its 2025 stabilisation period. The part outsiders consistently get wrong is treating Bira 91 like a national consumer brand that can scale the way an FMCG or app-based startup can. It cannot. Every state is effectively a separate regulatory market, and a single administrative misstep — as the name change proved — can freeze revenue nationwide overnight.

The numbers

Figures below are standalone/operating revenue and net loss as reported for B9 Beverages Limited, in ₹ crore.

Accumulated losses stood at ₹2,117.98 crore at the end of FY24, up from ₹1,473.01 crore a year earlier, and an FY24 audit noted liabilities exceeding assets by ₹619.6 crore. FY25 financials had not been publicly filed at the time of the most recent reporting used for this piece.

Where the money comes from

Bira 91 says it is present in 27 states, but its revenue is far more concentrated than that number suggests: roughly 40% of sales come from just two states, Delhi and Andhra Pradesh, with Delhi alone its single largest market — the same city whose 2022 excise policy turmoil had already hurt the business once. The bigger surprise is in format mix over time. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, roughly two out of every three Bira 91 bottles sold were in Tier I metro markets, the urban, millennial audience the brand was built around. Today, by the company’s own account, two out of three bottles sell in Tier II, Tier III and smaller towns — a near-total inversion of the customer base a “cool, urban” beer brand is assumed to have.

The risks

Three risks stand out, each with a visible mechanism rather than a hypothetical one. First, regulatory concentration: because alcohol licensing sits with individual states, a single administrative event — a company name change, a policy rewrite in one city — can halt sales nationally or in a core market, as it did in Delhi in 2022 and nationwide in 2024. Second, balance-sheet risk: FY24 auditors flagged liabilities exceeding assets by ₹619.6 crore and raised material uncertainty over the group’s ability to continue as a going concern, meaning future operations depend on fresh capital actually arriving on schedule. Third, governance and key-man risk: the company has cycled through four chief financial officers since 2019, employees have petitioned the board and investors demanding the founder’s removal, and its largest shareholder, Kirin, has been in an open dispute with the founder over control of The Beer Cafe, playing out in the Delhi High Court. Any one of these could delay the 2026 IPO the company has said it wants.

The takeaway

The lesson in Bira 91 is not “don’t rebrand” or “don’t grow fast.” It is that in a category regulated state by state, compliance is not back-office overhead sitting behind the brand — it is as load-bearing as the product itself. A company can spend a decade building a recognisable label and a loyal drinker base, and still lose most of it to a paperwork sequencing error, because the permission to sell was never as durable as the demand to buy.

Frequently asked questions

What does Bira 91 sell?

Bira 91 makes and sells beer under brands including White, Blonde, Boom and Light, positioned as affordable-premium craft beer, and previously operated The Beer Cafe bar chain.

Who founded Bira 91 and when?

Ankur Jain founded Bira 91 in 2015, starting by importing Belgian craft beer before building local breweries in Indore and Nagpur.

Why did Bira 91 face a cash crisis in 2024-25?

A December 2023 company name change, required after it crossed 200 shareholders, forced state-by-state re-registration of its alcohol licences and labels. The resulting sales and production freeze drove a 22% revenue drop and a ₹748 crore net loss in FY24, delayed salaries and led to a severe cash crunch.

Who are Bira 91’s major investors?

Backers include Peak XV Partners (formerly Sequoia Capital), Belgium’s Sofina, and Japan’s Kirin Holdings, which holds roughly 20-21% and was, as of November 2025, reported to be exploring an exit.

Is Bira 91 planning an IPO?

The company has said it is targeting an IPO in 2026, contingent on meeting operating milestones, but had not filed a draft prospectus as of its most recent public statements.

Sources

Figures are as of September 2026. Currency converted at $1 ≈ ₹96.0 as of 18 September 2026 (Trading Economics).

• HR Katha, “Over 250 Bira 91 employees demand founder’s removal amid delayed salaries” (2025)
• Outlook Business, “Bira 91’s Bitter Hangover: When Ambition Crashed Into Cash and Compliance Chaos” (2025)
• Inc42, “Inside The Bitter Collapse Of Bira 91” (November 2025)
• The Federal, “Bira 91 in turmoil after name change, faces financial crisis, employee revolt” (2025)
• Business Standard, “Japan’s Kirin Holdings exit B9 Beverages Bira 91 financial crisis debt loss” (November 2025)
• Outlook Business, “Bira 91 Maker’s Net Worth Wiped Out as Losses Cross ₹2,100 Crore, Flags Auditor” (2025)
• Business Standard, “Bira 91 faces major financial risks as FY24 audit flags losses, liabilities” (October 2025)
• Treelife, “What’s in a Name? The ₹80 Crore Lesson from Bira 91’s Costly Mistake” (2025)
• Entrackr, “Bira 91 posts flat scale in FY23, losses stand at Rs 445 Cr” (November 2023)
• Entrackr, “Bira 91’s scale nears Rs 720 Cr in FY22, losses spike 58%” (December 2022)
• Storyboard18, “From Delhi Techie to Beer King: Who is Bira 91 founder Ankur Jain?” (2025)
• Tracxn, “Bira 91 – Funding Rounds & List of Investors” (2026)
• Inc42, “Can Bira 91 Reclaim India’s Craft Beer Crown After Its Yearlong Hibernation?” (May 2025)
• Inc42, “Bira 91 Raises $70 Mn From Kirin Holdings” (2023)
• inside.beer, “India: Kirin Holdings Increases Stake in B9 Beverages Beyond 20%” (2023)

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