A load of crap from an idle brain

A commendable performance by Force India & Bangalore Royal Challengers and now this milestone of United Spirits clocking a sales volume of 100 million cases for the year.  Vijay Mallya and his companies are on a roll.  The only bleeding part being the airlines business.

United Spirits’ brands include

Dalmore
Jura
Whyte & Mackay
Black Dog
Antiquity
Signature
Royal Challenge
McDowell’s No.1
Celebration Rum
Bouvet Ladubay
Pinky
Romanov
White Mischief
Kingfisher

United Spirits Limited (USL), the flagship company of The UB Group, today announced that it has crossed the milestone of clocking a sales volume of 100 million cases for the fiscal year ended March 31, 2010. This achievement makes United Spirits the world’s second-largest spirits company by volumes, dislodging Paris-headquartered Pernod Ricard.

Key Highlights:

• The retail sales value of the spirits portfolio sales of United Spirits for the 100 million cases sold is Rs. 30,000 Crores

• USL’s 100 million cases contributed Government revenue of Rs. 18,000 Crores through excise and other levies

• USL has dominant market share and the fastest growing brands in most key segments

• USL has outperformed global competitors with USL brands growing 14% while the world’s top 100 spirits brands collectively grew only 1% and this when 18 of the top 25 global premium brands lost ground

• In the last 25 years, USL has sold a total of 740 million cases

• United Spirits launched Black Dog 18 YO in the super premium Bottled — In-India (BII) scotch category to further ramp up its market share

• The company upped the ante in the premium IMFL segment with the introduction of 100% pure grain-based McDowell’s Platinum whisky.

Full article here

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Vijay Mallya is a shrewd businessman. He had the chance to name the team as Kingfisher. Afterall, its his flagship brand. Maybe he wanted to tug at the Indian’s heart. Another good news is that he has hinted that he might not go entirely native by having Narain Karthikeyan at the wheel. He’s in talks with Ralf Schumacher, who happens to be a good friend of Mallya and had visited India at his behest some months ago. So, it could be Ralf and the current driver Adrian Sutil (Germany) in the driver seat for 2008.

“The critical issue is: ‘India on the F1 grid,’ ” Mallya said in an interview at Monza, Italy, days after the deal was announced in September. “You will get 200 million fans overnight. It’s humongous by world standards. It’s good for Formula One, it’s good for the sport, it’s good for the country.”

Mallya has got 2 full years to go to fine tune before the F1 reaches India in 2010 and am sure it would be pure mayhem then. Knowing Mallya, he had once said on national television “When i set my mind on something, i do it”. And i love the conviction of that man.

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