New Delhi: As Indians reach for foaming pints of beer to beat the sweltering heat, brewers are quietly smiling as they expect sales to soar as and when temperatures do.
"Almost 60 per cent of the sales of beer in India take place in the three summer months from May to July and for North India, it is even more as during winter sales drop to almost negligible" PTI quoted Indian Breweries Association (IBA) Director Sundeep Kumar as saying.
He said around 20 million cases of beer per month are expected to be sold this summer, picking up from around 6-8 million cases per month during winter.
Temperatures are already hovering in the range of 40-45 degree Celsius in Nagpur, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad and the national Capital.
There are even more reasons to smile, as the beer market clocked double digit growth in India for the third consecutive year. Last year, the per capita beer consumption in India also crossed the one litre threshold from the previous 0.8 litre.
"The average growth in 2006-07 was around 27 per cent but there were number of reasons for that and in 2007-08 it is expected to remain 15 to 20 per cent," Kumar added.
According to the data provided by IBA, overall domestic consumption of beer in the fiscal ended on March 2007 was 137 million cases (one case has 7.8 litres of Beer) up from 108 million in previous fiscal.
Industry experts have predicted more than 25-fold growth in the beer consumption in the next two decades and this has led to more players eyeing the Indian market.
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