Sumit Jaiswal started his wine career with Indage Vintners- earlier known as Champagne Indage, as International Sales & Marketing Executive in 2005 for almost 2 years. He joined Vallee de Vin (later christened as Zampa Vineyards) in Nashik in 2008. He joined Grover Vineyards after the two companies merged into Grover Zampa. There he rose from the initial rank of Marketing Manager to Vice President-Marketing and Exim in 2021.

He took charge as COO on October 1, the same days as Vivek Chandramohan left the company as the CEO of the company. As of now, there is no CEO and Sumit reports to a representative of the AVT Group which had invested in Grover Zampa in 2018 and had recapitalized by investing Rs. 90 Cr.

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Despite herculean efforts by the erstwhile Chairman Ravi Viswanathan to arrange the funds after he had organised Rs. 60 Cr in 2018 towards the total requirement of Rs. 130 Cr, the funds could not be arranged and the company was choking and the sales continued to drop, with not only the then nearest competitor Fratelli overtaking it, another new entrant Virgin Hills seemed to be ahead of Grover Zampa. Ravi was obliged to convince AVT to invest heavily and with no funds to maintain the controlling stake, he had to step down as the Chairman and hand over control to AVT and Quintela.

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Things seemed to have turned a full circle. In similar circumstances, Kapil Grover, the then Chairman of the company could not manage the additional funds to maintain his control and was ousted a few years ago.

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The company maintains that they will focus on premium products and propose to launch several high quality products, according to a Report in Mint. But as a matter of fact, the company under the chairmanship of Ravi Viswanathan, had already launched the premium Signet label that represented high quality. Many other premium wines including Chardonnay, Fumé Blanc and Qvevri- fermented wines were in progress. Grover was also the first winery to invest in 2 egg-shaped fermenters for better quality.

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The wine tourism project has been in the cold for years due to lack of funds. Even Bangalore has been tardy in promoting wine tourism when the management has often claimed that it realized the importance of the project.

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Now that the funds have been organised, it needs to up its game in the sales department since only increased sales will help them sustain in the long term. One hopes that the new management will take concerted action and bring Grover back to the glorious nineties when it was a winery of reckoning.

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We wish Sumit a successful assignment-his success is as important for the company as it is for him. Meanwhile, he reports to one of the representatives of AVT Group.

Subhash Arora