In the late 1990s, when Scotch whisky brands were finally allowed to be sold legally in India after an import ban that lasted several decades, the big joke among Scottish distillers was that more Scotch is drunk in India than produced in Scotland. The implication, of course, was that India was the land of mass-produced bootleg Scotch.  

The wheel, in many ways, has come full circle in recent times. Earlier this year, the Scotch Whisky Association, the official Scotch whisky maker’s trade body in Scotland, announced that India had become the largest market for Scotch whisky in the world.  Indians drank 219 million bottles of Scotch last year, as compared to France and the US; the second and third-placed countries drank 205 m and 137 m bottles each.  

According to the SWA, Indian Scotch consumption has grown 200 per cent over the last decade. And it seems to have scaled new highs during and after the pandemic. It grew by a staggering 60 per cent    in 2021-22 alone. No large country in the world came anywhere close to these numbers. The US was at 9 per cent, and Brazil at 14 per cent.  

Besides being a volume market, India has moved up the ladder considerably in terms of value as well. The local Scotch whisky market in 2022 was estimated to be worth $ 357 million, the world’s 5th largest, after the US, France, Singapore, and Taiwan. And the Indian value growth rate — a phenomenal 93 per cent over the previous year. 

Yet, Scotch, according to the SWA, constitutes only 2 % of the annual Indian whisky sales. And if one were to extrapolate from this, Indians consumed a mind-boggling 10 billion bottles of whisky last year. It is not surprising that one out of every two bottles of whisky sold worldwide is consumed in India.  

Indians first began drinking whisky about a century ago, when whisky makers like William Grant started travelling around the Indian countryside to popularise whisky consumption among Britishers then stationed here. Well-heeled Indians joined them, and whisky acquired the reputation as an aspirational drink imbibed by the rich and the mighty.  

Following the import curbs that came with Independence, Scotch whisky became a scarce commodity in the country. Entrepreneurial local distillers, however, found an easier way to make Indian-style whisky — by distilling sugarcane molasses left over after sugar manufacture. Moreover, this whisky had no peaty notes of Scotch whisky and was much sweeter, which the Indians loved.  Considering the country’s traditionally vast sugarcane production, this whisky-making was much cheaper. And overnight, this combination of factors made whisky the drink of choice amongst millions of Indians moving up the prosperity ladder, who were looking for a cheap alternative to the local country liquor.  India thus became a whisky nation. Even now, whisky constitutes nearly 70 per cent of the $40 billion annual Indian alcohol market. More than 90 per cent of this sale comes from local whiskies priced below Rs 750 a bottle.  

But Indians are moving up the value chain in their whisky consumption. It is then not surprising that SWA says on their website that “India is the Scotch whisky industry’s number one priority market, and a UK-India trade deal has the potential to increase Scotch Whisky exports to the country by £1bn over the next five years.” 

Over the last few years, it has been hard at work lobbying the Indian government to reduce the hefty 150 per cent   import duty. “If the tariff were liberalised, Scotch Whisky’s market share could treble to 6 per cent, giving greater access to Scotch Whisky products for Indian consumers but still allowing Indian whiskies and other spirits to retain the dominant share of the market,” the SWA says. 

As SWA has acknowledged, it is improbable that Scotch or any other international distiller will ever dominate the Indian whisky market. This is true not just at the lower end of the market anymore, as the Scottish and Japanese Single Malt makers have seen in the last decade. Indian distillers, including international companies based here, are working hard to cash in on the growing urban Indian preference for high-end whiskies, particularly Single Malts. Seeing the runaway success of Amrut, Paul John, and Rampur, followed by Indri and Godawan in the last year, more and more companies are jumping into the fray. Two new Indian Single Malts were launched in the space of one week recently — Crazy Cock from the Mumbai-based South Seas Distilleries and Longitude 77 from Pernod Ricard, which is currently retailing across Haryana, Goa, Maharashtra, Chandigarh, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Delhi Duty-Free.

Compared to 15 per cent five years ago, Indian Single Malts now constitute 33 per cent of the local market and is growing at the rate of 42 per cent a year as compared to 7 per cent for the imported varieties.  This is quite something considering that the price difference between the Indian and imported whiskies is very little.  

The Single Malt market is expected to get even more active in the coming years, with many more Indian third-party distillers discovering that they have vast quantities of aged whiskies sitting in their storage tanks. Because of Indian weather conditions, whiskies age faster in India than in Scotland or Japan. So, it is likely that many of them will take the Single Malt route. It is indeed an excellent time for both Indian and international whisky producers.