Spirit of India: Wild Tiger’s Tale
Q. What prompted you to come into Travel Retail? Were there any false starts before Wild Tiger?
A. The ideating for the brand started in 2006 and we planned everything meticulously. I always knew that the packaging was going to be bold and striking – just like the wild cat itself. We envisaged something that was quintessentially Indian for travellers leaving India to take back with them and we felt that the liquor category offered us the best opportunity to do that, and within that was Indian Rum.
Before Wild Tiger I was briefly involved with a herbal liqueur my Dad introduced. But I was too young and not very much clued up. It’a always more inspiring and thrilling when it’s one’s own baby as wild Tiger is to me now. In the earlier situation it was my Dad’s and not mine. As much as I tried to make it work, it was not to be. But there were some great learnings. I don’t believe that anything is permanent failure.
Q. Can you explain the strategy that supports the brand? Do you see Wild Tiger and Brand India as being inextricably linked?
A. It’s a great time for Brand India. India and its policies have come a long way when compared to a decade ago. What we are trying to showcase is the strong sugarcane and rum-making provenance connected to India, which most consumers are actually unaware of. Mexico makes great Tequila because the re are plentiful
agave plantations. India should be making great rum because we are predominantly a sugarcane country, second only to Brazil.
Our motto is simple: ”Think out of the Bottle”. What this means is that everything we do with this brand is done keeping in mind the key drivers of Innovation and Social Responsibility, which lie at the heart of the message. When we created the product we were very clear that our mission had to create a quintessentially Indian lifestyle product with strong credential and provenance. Basically, we aspired to what Guinness is to Ireland, what Corona is to Mexico and to what Jack Daniels is to America. This was what we were thinking.
To this end we felt the best combination was to produce an authentic rum – given that the origin of sugarcane was from ancient India and the fact that India remains in the top two largest sugarcane producers in the world. So, in staying true to the Indian story, we went with rum as the spirit of choice, as opposed to a vodka or a whisky , which were the two buoyant categories at the time.
And in order to capture the imagination of the traveller, we felt that no other animal of India does it like the tiger does. It’s the national animal and it’s also an endangered one. Being a huge tiger enthusiast myself, this was a no brainer.
