King cobra
Cobra has turned the reputation of Indian beer upside down – but it’s taken the strangest route to do so. Nigel Huddleston reports
The year is 1989 and as a junior reporter on a British drinks trade paper I’m dispatched to talk to a bloke who’s about to launch a new bottled lager in the United Kingdom.
The country’s in the grip of Sol fever – complete with wedge of lime stuffed in the top of the bottle – and hundreds of one-man bands are trying to cash in by becoming beer importers overnight. Main brand criteria for choosing a brand: just make sure it’s from a country not already represented in the UK.
In search of the Holy Grail of a genuinely free lunch, I make my way to a posh-nosh curry house on the City fringe of London’s East End to meet him.
He’s supremely confident, almost too much so. His background as a Cambridge law graduate, a qualified accountant with Ernst & Young and as the son of one of the Indian army’s top generals, he makes a change from the usual brewery rep who’s cutting his teeth as a brand manager for dog food.
His plummy Indian accent reflects his past and he’s eloquently convincing when he says he’s going to create his own lager brand that’s going to be a substantial player on the cluttered UK market. But he’s clearly insane.
Like all the other chancers with similar ambitions, I expect never to hear of him again. He’ll be here today, and very much gone tomorrow.
Sixteen years later and Karan Bilimoria has built the lager, Cobra, into a brand worth £120 million in the UK, exported to 30 countries, and with offices in New York, Cape Town and Mumbai.
In the UK, it’s sold in 6.....
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By Nigel Huddleston
Section : Beer Trends
Page number : 48
