AB InBev launches first non-alcoholic energy drink for India

“The energy drinks category is heavily under-indexed for premium quality brands. This will take Budweiser to new, bolder places in the Indian market. It has been approved for the India market for the first time, such as Budweiser Magnum in 2012. After the success we showed with Magnum, it is traveling to China as a breakthrough innovation born in India,” Sharma said. The company will sell its products online on e-commerce platforms as well as modern trade stores.

Although the company makes the vitamin energy drink Maw in Brazil, the Ghost energy drink in the US, and Fusion in China and Brazil, Budweiser Beats is the first of its kind here. For now, the product will be manufactured in India and will be retailed exclusively here. Sharma said the company targets 20% of its global revenue to come from low-alcohol or non-alcoholic products by 2025.

“While this is a key driver of why we are expanding our portfolio to offer 0.0 alcohol products, we are catering for opportunities when consumers do not want to have alcohol in their beverages,” Sharma said. Another reason for launching energy drinks here is that the category in India is extremely low compared to the larger carbonated beverage segment at just 5-10%.

Globally, the company announced that it wants to reduce the harmful use of alcohol by at least 10% in six top cities around the world by the end of last year. Globally, its ambition is to integrate non-alcoholic beers and beers with an ABV (alcohol by volume) of 3.5% or less into their current beverage options for existing drinkers, it said, reducing their total Reduce alcohol consumption.

In 2018, United Breweries Limited (UBL), India’s largest beer maker, entered the non-alcoholic beverage segment with the launch of Kingfisher Radler, hoping to expand the Kingfisher brand beyond beer and into those geographies which were otherwise inaccessible.

This segment of beverages with 0.0% alcohol, Sharma said, is growing at a CAGR of 19-20% for the company from 2018 to 2022, which is about three to four times the size of the industry in other developed markets. He added, “And this represents a big jump for growth. We have been learning to grow the 0.0% non-alcoholic category over the past 18 months. We will continue to venture further into non-alcoholic products.”

Vikram Achanta, co-founder and CEO of Tuliho, a drink training and consulting firm, said Budweiser Beats is a very interesting crossover product because it not only sports the Budweiser brand name, and therefore can potentially replace non-alcoholic or light beer. attracts. Drinkable, it also resonates with the trend in the soft drink sector that is seeing a shift to “functional drinks” that provide nutritional benefits.

Its success will depend on the flavor profile in such a category, he added. “Red Bull sets a marker for the taste perception of energy drinks, so it may not be too exotic in flavor profile,” he said.

According to Mordor Intelligence, the energy drinks market is projected to grow at a CAGR of 9.22% during 2020-2025.