Non-alcoholic beverage industry is going through a bit of a renaissance: Ankur Bhatia

Founded in 2019 by Ankur Bhatia and Nitin Bhardwaj, Radiohead Brands is a currently the market leader in the cocktail mixers category. The company also recently introduced its sparkling mixers range in cans with variants Classic Lemonade, Tonic Water and Ginger Ale. Built on an omnichannel (D2C + Retail) strategy, the company started online testing and sales of Hustle, AB testing with consumers and perfecting its recipe and packaging design almost two years earlier. The Hustle Energy Drink product is made in Dubai. With the tagline, ‘Don’t just Dream – Hustle!’, the brand is aimed at a new generation of entrepreneurs, builders and creators.

The beverage industry in India is currently unexplored when it comes to per capita beverage consumption in comparison to other developed nations. While majority of the non-alcoholic beverage brands offer their products at the standard average rates of Rs 20, Radiohead Brands offers the same at Rs 50-100, which allows it to source superior quality natural ingredients and, therefore, deliver high-quality products, making it a preferred beverage brand among the consumers.

In July 2023, Radiohead Brands secured Rs 11 crore in a pre-series A funding round from Prath Ventures and Vijay Shekhar Sharma. The brand has reportedly gained Rs 80 crore in gross revenues in the financial year 2023. The products under its Jimmy’s brand are sold in premium retail stores in around 50 cities and its competitors are Jade Forest, Sepoy & Co, Sting, Svami, Franklin & Sons, etc.

In the year 2019, the worth of the overall beverage market was around Rs 67,000 crore The non-alcoholic beverage market in India could be expanding at a compound annual growth rate of 8.7% to reach nearly Rs 1.47 trillion by the year 2030, according to a report by Indian Council For Research on International Economic Relations, 2022.

In conversation with Adgully, Ankur Bhatia, Founder, Radiohead Brands, said, “Radiohead started with a vision to disrupt the beverage segment at the premium end. The name, Radiohead, signifies our antennas are always tuned to new consumer trends and whatever is culturally cool.”

What are the industry trends in the beverage industry currently?

India is still very under-penetrated in terms of per capita beverage consumption vis-a-vis more developed nations. However, the non-alcoholic beverage industry is going through a bit of a renaissance. On the one hand, there is increasing focus on healthy and low-zero sugar beverages and there is also a trend towards innovations, differentiated and more premium offerings. Modern Indian consumers are now willing to experiment with newer forms of beverages aside from standard juices and colas.

Could you take us through the inception of Radiohead Brands and their journey of growth?

Radiohead was conceptualised with a vision to disrupt the Indian beverage industry at the premium end. Where the majority of the offerings were standard colas and juices at an average price of Rs 20, we planned an entire range of offerings between Rs 50 and Rs 100. The higher margins allowed us to use very superior quality, more natural ingredients vis-a-vis other beverage majors. We understood that we needed to create differentiated offerings since even if we were to make a better quality Orange Juice, it would be hard to communicate the difference to consumers. This gave birth to Jimmys Cocktails, which was altogether a new category.

We recently launched Hustle Energy Drink and by March next year, we will be adding two new categories, truly transforming us into a multi-beverage company, as was our vision in 2019. This should have been done earlier, however, we lost a few years to Covid.

Why was the name Radiohead chosen as the name of the brand?

The Indian packaged beverage category is severely underpenetrated, especially within the urban consumer sets, given the lack of differentiated options. Radiohead started with a vision to disrupt the beverage segment at the premium end. Radiohead the name, signifies our antennas are always tuned to new consumer trends and whatever is cultural cool.

What are the major sources of funding for Radiohead Brands?

We started with $700k, which was our seed round and now we have just closed our Pre Series A at $4.3 million. Our investors are a mix of institutional funds and seasoned angels, who have invested in a personal capacity, like Vijay Shekhar (PayTM), Keki Mistry (HDFC); top founders like Varun Alagh (Mama Earth) and Vishesh Khurana (Ship Rocket), among others.

What are the newer categories that Radiohead Brands is exploring?

We are exploring various ready-to-drink and ready-to-serve or mix categories. Our vision is to be the market leader in premium beverages. If any packaged beverage category can command a premium at a 200ml-250ml per unit capacity, we are considering it.

What is the market size for Radiohead Brands?

The total size of the Indian packaged beverage market is approximately Rs 90,000 crore; 44% of which is carbonated drinks, 26% is bottled water, and juices are 24%. 6% are other newer category beverages with a market size of about Rs 5,400 crore, which we would be looking to dominate.

How is Radiohead Brands different from its competitors? What is its USP?

Given that we sell our products at higher price points than beverage majors, we can source better quality ingredients from around the world. That is why our products are lower in sugar than standard beverages in the market, which retain the natural sweetness of the superior quality juice.

What is the distribution strategy of Radiohead Brands?

We are an omnichannel brand and run our D2C business alongside our retail expansion. This enables us to get great consumer insights from across cities with which we can plan our retail expansion. Currently, with Jimmys we are in 25,000 retail outlets and delivering to over 400 cities/ towns in India through drinkjimmys.com. Jimmys has also recently started moving overseas and recently we launched in Singapore. Energy drinks are one of the fastest-growing categories in India, and Hustle was designed for disruption. Launched this July, we will increase its distribution faster than Jimmys to 50,000 outlets before the end of next year.

What are the marketing activities undertaken by Radiohead Brands? How has been the traction received from those campaigns?

We put utmost care in our packaging and brand positioning. A lot of Jimmys success was built upon that.

Unlike most new age D2C brands, we are very trade/ channel marketing driven. I would say that’s our DNA. We do a lot of sampling and events across the country, over 300 since post-Covid. Added to that are all new-age marketing strategies that start-ups employ – social, digital, and influencers.

With Hustle, we did the same thing as Jimmys and positioned the brand differently from a category notorious for similar meaning brand names and positioning. Our brand tagline, “Don’t Just Dream – Hustle”, was crafted to appeal to a new generation of entrepreneurs, creators, and builders.

What are the growth projections of Radiohead Brands?

We have grown more than 100% year on year since we operationally started and are on track to cross Rs 100 crore in annual revenue runrate by next year.