A man walks into a bar, fires up a mobile app, and gets his choice of booze in a single click. That’s not a new “walk into the bar” joke; it’s the business model of a few startups. Call it alcohol on the cloud.
Three startups — Hipcask, HipBar and The Bar Stock Exchange — are looking to offer urban consumers — mainly millennials — the liquor of their choice at the time of their choosing at affordable rates.
It is too early to state whether these largely app-based models can scale, given that all three are currently operating in single locations. They're betting on rapidly evolving consumer behaviour, rising disposable incomes, and the increasing availability of global liquor brands in the country.
“I find it super useful after work hours, or on the weekend, when I’m out for a girly brunch. We don’t end up spending a bomb when the bill comes, thanks to the ‘beer passport’, which literally acts like a prepaid beer plan,” said Nikita Sheth, a 25-year-old fashion designer, living in suburban Mumbai.
A beer passport, for the uninitiated, is a virtual product created and offered by Hipcask to allow consumers select various offers at set prices for a set period, of, say, two months.
One can avail the offer at any of Hipcask’s partner restaurants and bars that stock the said brand. Hence the reference to apassport. “It’s not a model that can be put in a single slot. We are a technology, consumer and discovery platform, attempting to create brand loyalty and impact consumer behaviour when it comes to alcohol,” said Aneesh Bhasin, cofounder, Hipcask.
The three-year-old venture, which has been backed by venture capital, started off as content-focussed app before pivoting to its current avatar in 2015.
Bhasin, who set up the firm along with Shiladitya Mukhopadhyaya, said Hipcask has partnered with several of Mumbai’s leading craft brew pubs and restaurants.
It now plans to offer passports for whisky and wine.
“When we started off, we realised that no one was doing anything consumer-centric… Right now, we have about 30,000 users on the platform, and what we also bring to the table is brand loyalty,” he said.
While Bhasin and Mukhopadhyaya are techies, Prasanna Natarajan, founder of Bengaluru-based HipBar, has a solid background in the hospitality and food and beverages space, owning and operating Sippin Spirits that manufactures premium vodka, and imports and bottles tequila.
The just-launched HipBar app allows consumers to buy their favourite liquor brands, and take delivery or consume — even in small portions — from retail stores, restaurants and bars.
HipBar is basically a Reserve Bank of India-certified mobile wallet that solely covers a network of establishments that sell or serve alcohol.
However, unlike other wallets, it also acts as a discovery platform, where consumers can load money on to HipBar wallet, check out the catalogue of products on offer, and pay accordingly.
The venture has also tied up with mix of restaurant chains and standalone establishments, including Social and Sotally Tober. It is also working with liquor brands. “We have 100 stores and 80 bars that have signed up so far. The alcohol industry annually spends about `3,500 crore on sales and marketing, and none of it is on the distribution channels. That’s where we come in,” said Natarajan who lives in Chennai and Goa.
He emphasised that HipBar will not do discounts. It will, at best, offer suggestions to its partners, based on its analytics, but will leave it to them to take a call. “Our focus is on the experience. Deals and discounts are the prerogative of the establishment or the brand. We are a meeting place,” Natarajan said.
BAR STOCK EXCHANGE
Also in the spectrum is The Bar Stock Exchange (BSE), a popular restaurant-bar venture that first opened its doors in 2014 in Sakinaka, Andheri.
The business model of BSE mimics the stock market. “Just like shares at the stock market, prices of alcohol rise and fall and can be tracked on an LED screen in the bar,” said Amit Singh, cofounder of the bar chain. Prices go up and down based on the demand and supply for a particular brand of alcohol.
There are now eight BSEs dotting the maximum city skyline, with three more scheduled to open this quarter. Now there’s an app as well. “The app is for the users to log into when they are at the bar. For instance, it isn’t surprising to find users drinking Old Monk rum for Rs 16 a peg or Black Label whisky for less than Rs 100, based on the demand and supply concept,” said Singh.
He said more than one lakh people have already downloaded the BSE app as the novelty of its model has clearly caught the fancy of tipplers in the country’s financial capital.
Sheth, the fashion designer fan of Hipcask, also loves BSE. “When it comes to the BSE app, we rarely have to wait for our drinks, plus we can opt for quality alcohol at a steal if we are monitoring the prices,” she said.
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