The first bottles have just arrived in Bangalore from the winery on which the company has reportedly spent Rs.25 million, according to Neeraj. The company will discuss plans to bottle the red variant towards the end of the month.
Neeraj declined to comment on the grape varietals or other technical information. ‘I have joined the company from January 1 and would need to check the exact figures.’
Neeraj is an ex-Hindustan Unilever senior person with the Food Solutions division of the consumer major and has over 20 years of marketing and management experience of food and beverages, though not wine which ‘has been a passion for me for years as my father was in the defence and he used to drink wine regularly and it used to be invariably Grover wine.’
‘One of our objectives is to bring the Sangli plant to the level of Bangalore winery. Dr. Arif Jamal who was the CEO earlier did a lot to bring the winery on a modern footing and it is our endeavour to repeat the experience at Sangli. Our Australian winemaker Paul Bailey is supervising very closely.’
Talking about the latest Wine India Move for delWine, Kapil Grover, the owner Director of Grover Vineyards informs delWine, ‘Moving forward, we realized that we need a full-time CEO and we were looking for someone with a strong marketing and management background and Neeraj fitted well with our requirements. With Brindco concentrating on marketing, we hope to achieve the sale of a million bottles this year and then a constant growth of 20-25% during the next few years.
Grover has been a quality player with steady growth but unfortunately had a setback during the last couple of years because of some unexpected quality problems which are ‘well behind us,’ concludes Neeraj Verma.
Subhash Arora |