Product before brand, a cautionary swig

Till a few years back, B9 Beverages was the toast of town. But, by 2024, the beer startup started being a flat, frothy mess. Finally, last month, the 2-yr wrangle over ownership and outstanding dues got a breather when founder Ankur Jain relinquished executive powers in lieu of a waiver of his personal liabilities. This is a sobering case study of buzz overtaking biz realities. It   also highlights consequences of entrepreneurial creativity clashing with plain numbers.

A brand is a many-splendoured thing, especially in a marketplace where home-made brand paucity continues to be felt. In 2015, when Bira's craft beers started pouring, it stood out in a tough, competitive public house with quirky branding, distinctive taste and a differentiated go-to-market strategy, even elbowing out several domestic and international legacy brands in the process. But, in business, reading the room is critical, reckless expansion without execution muscle that shreds balance sheets with additional fixed costs and leverage is bound to boomerang. Imports also ballooned B9's expenditure, splurging on sponsorships, tie-ups not helping. Finally, when demand plateaued but regulatory friction spiked, Jain fell flat and the entire network architecture fell on him.

In a hypercompetitive F&B market, a product out of stock is out of mind. Once competition fills the gap, consumers seamlessly switch over. Asset-liability mismatches have undone several cash-guzzling, capex-intensive businesses, but rarely given a bad hangover to a scaled consumer-centric enterprise. By FY24, Bira's net worth fully eroded, liabilities surpassing assets, and accumulated losses were 22x its negative cash flows. Moral of the story: a product makes a brand, not the other way around.