Craft beer brand Bira 91 secures $50 Mn from Sofina

Craft beer brand B9 Beverages, the maker of Bira 91 has raised $50 million from Brussels-based investment firm Sofina. With fresh capital infusion, the Sequoia Capital-backed company's valuation expected to be about Rs 1,300- Rs 1,400 crore.

Existing investor Sequoia Capital, which held a majority stake in Bira, also participated in the current round of funding. Post the funding round Sequoia's stake is expected to fall below 50 per cent due to dilution, reports ET.

Besides, founder and CEO Ankur Jain and the promoter group of B9 Beverages will own 30 per cent of the company post this round while Sofina will be provided 28 per cent stake.

Bira 91, which has been operational in overseas will primarily use the fresh capital to expand its distribution market in India.

The company has raised more than $100 million since its inception. It currently sells five variants of its beer across seven states covering 15 Indian cities including Bengaluru and Delhi. It has also launched its brand in New York, New Jersey, Boston, and Philadelphia in the US.

Launched in February 2015 by Jain, Bira 91 started producing locally in 2016 when it opened its Indore facility. The beer brand currently has two units in Indore and Nagpur with a bottling capacity of about 4.2 million cases a year.

The company claims to have sold 2.7 million cases of beer in the previous fiscal and it aims to ramp up production capacity five-fold over the next 18 months. The company clocked sales of Rs 165 crore in the previous fiscal and expected to operationally profitable in the current financial year.

In December, last year, Bira 91 had raised Rs 25 crore by issuing debentures to Anicut Capital. Prior to that, it raised around $8 million from Sequoia.

During its initial days, Bira 91 had also received investments from Kunal Bahl and Rohit Bansal, co-founders of Snapdeal, Zomato’s founder Deepinder Goyal, including several other investors.