I remember a conversation from the early 2000s — a quiet evening with a senior diplomat at a Delhi gathering — when he pointed to the whisky in his glass and said, half-amused, that the Indian market’s idea of premium was a bottle that didn’t taste like cough syrup. We laughed, because there was painful truth in it. That moment stayed with me. It became, in many ways, a compass.
Two decades later, that diplomat’s observation belongs to another era entirely. The Indian alco-bev industry is in the middle of a genuine, structural premiumisation wave — one that is neither a fad nor a flash in the statistical pan. It is a recalibration of what Indian consumers believe they deserve. And the world — investors, global distillers, trade emissaries, and certainly the diplomatic community — is paying close attention.
What Is Actually Happening
Let us be precise about what premiumisation means in the Indian context, because the word gets thrown around carelessly. It does not simply mean consumers spending more. It means consumers making a deliberate choice to trade up — to move from volume to value, from the familiar to the considered, from the economical to the experiential. It is a shift in psychology as much as in price point.
India today is the world’s largest whisky market by volume. That is not new. What is new is where the growth is coming from. The economy and regular segments — which for decades defined the market — are growing modestly. The premium, prestige, and ultra-premium segments are growing at rates that would make any category marketer’s pulse quicken. IWSR and similar research bodies have consistently shown that premium-and-above spirits in India are expanding at double-digit compound rates, even as the broader market grows at a healthy but more measured pace.
This is not a Delhi and Mumbai story. It is spreading. Tier 2 cities — Chandigarh, Pune, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Kochi — are producing consumers who are informed, aspirational, and increasingly brand-literate. A young professional in Indore today has access to the same Instagram feed, the same bar culture conversations, and many of the same imported spirits as their counterpart in any global city. That is a market transformation of the first order.
The Drivers — And They Are Not What You Think
The surface-level explanation is income growth. True, but insufficient. India’s per capita income trajectory is well documented, and rising disposable incomes are a structural tailwind. But income alone does not explain why a consumer who can afford a mid-range whisky chooses to stretch for something better. That decision is cultural.
The first real driver is the globalisation of Indian aspiration. Indians travel more than ever before. They study abroad, they work in multinational environments, they consume global media voraciously. When they return home — or when global culture comes to them through OTT platforms and social media — their benchmarks travel with them. They have tasted Scotch in Edinburgh, cocktails in Singapore, fine wine in Bordeaux. They are not willing to settle, back home, for less.
The second driver — and I would argue the more powerful one — is the rise of the Indian connoisseur. There is now a generation of consumers, particularly in the 28-45 age bracket, who do not merely drink; they discuss. They can tell you about cask maturation, congener profiles, peat levels. They follow brand stories. They ask about provenance. In my experience, this is not confined to the top-income bracket — it permeates the aspirational middle class in ways that were simply not there fifteen years ago.
The third driver is occasion culture. The Indian consumer’s relationship with alcohol has traditionally been private, sometimes furtive. That is changing rapidly. Home bars are a status symbol. Gifting a premium bottle is now a sophisticated social act. The celebratory occasion — a wedding, a promotion, a diplomatic dinner — increasingly demands a bottle that tells a story. This is where brands with genuine craft and heritage earn their place at the table.
The Role of Domestic Craft — A Personal Perspective
I have spent the better part of my career building brands for the Indian market — not merely products that compete on price, but brands that carry an identity, a point of view. When we crafted the Golfer’s Shot Whisky range, the thinking was deliberate: here is a consumer who has a lifestyle, a sensibility, a preference for the refined and the considered. The golfer — as archetype and as reality — is someone who understands patience, precision, and the satisfaction of a long game well played. Whisky made for that consumer cannot be an afterthought.
The Golfer’s range taught us something important early on: the Indian premium consumer is remarkably loyal once he trusts you. We watched consumers upgrade within the range, gift it, recommend it. That loyalty — earned product by product, sip by sip — is what sustainable premiumisation looks like. It is not a marketing campaign. It is a covenant.
Similarly, White and Blue was conceived with a specific clarity of purpose: to offer Indian consumers a whisky that felt premium not by imitation of foreign markers, but by its own confident character. There is a certain pride in that. India need not always look westward for its standard of excellence. We have the raw materials, the distilling tradition, and increasingly, the technical sophistication to produce world-class spirits on home soil.
Trends Worth Watching
Several specific trends are shaping the next chapter of premiumisation in India, and I offer them not as predictions but as observations drawn from the market face.
Whisky remains the dominant category and will for some time. But single malts — both Scotch imports and the now-flourishing Indian single malt movement — are growing at a pace that commands respect. Indian single malts, in particular, have done something remarkable: they have won international recognition not through comparison to Scotch, but on their own merits. That is a statement about category maturity.
Gin is having a remarkable moment. The craft gin explosion that swept Europe has found fertile ground in India, where botanical diversity is almost incomparable. Homegrown gin brands have multiplied, and more interestingly, consumers are engaging with them at a level of curiosity that was unimaginable even five years ago. Bar menus in premium establishments now feature Indian gins with the same pride as imported labels.
Wine is the long game. India’s wine culture is still nascent by global standards, but it is growing with quiet determination. Nashik is no longer just a grape-growing region — it is an emerging wine destination. As Indian consumers become more food-sophisticated, wine will follow naturally. The diplomatic community in India, I suspect, has noticed that wine conversations at dinner tables have become considerably more fluent over the past decade.
Ready-to-drink and premium cocktail culture deserve mention. The bar as a destination — curated, experiential, often built around a specific spirit narrative — is a genuine urban phenomenon. These bars are the most efficient educators the premium segment has. A well-made cocktail using a premium Indian spirit is worth ten advertising impressions.
A Word to the International Community
For the diplomatic corps, the high commissions, the international business community that calls India home or engages with it regularly: the transformation underway in India’s spirits and beverage culture is a reliable proxy for broader shifts in Indian consumer behaviour and economic aspiration. A country where the premium conversation has moved from imported Scotch in five-star hotel bars to Indian single malts discussed knowledgeably at private dinners — that country has crossed a threshold.
India is not merely a large market becoming larger. It is a sophisticated market becoming more sophisticated. That is a different and more consequential thing. For those of us who have built brands and businesses in this environment over decades, it is a moment of considerable satisfaction — and, frankly, considerable excitement.
The glass, as they say, is more than half full. And what is in it, increasingly, is something we made ourselves — with care, with pride, and with a very clear sense of who we are making it for.
Leave a Reply