Sula is what Bira wanted to become

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Editor's note: The draft IPO prospectus of Sula Vineyards is more of a playbook. Filed late last week by the Mumbai-based wine company, the prospectus is a 460-page manual on navigating the Indian market and the persistence required to build a business out of alcohol in India. Sula goes back to the 1990s. It was founded and is run by second-generation entrepreneur Rajeev Samant. It set up its first vineyard in the city of Nashik in Maharashtra in 1996 on a piece of land owned by Samant’s family and introduced its first wine in 2000. It was seed-funded by family, friends and banks. At the time, domestic wine was barely a functioning sector in India, or as Sula says in its prospectus, “... wine as an industry in India is largely a post calendar year 2000 phenomenon. Prior to 2000, wine produced domestically was largely small-scale and confined to pockets, or comprised imported products that were essentially sold in 5-star hotels.” As things stand today, Sula Vineyards is a market leader in a Rs 1,200 crore industry that is growing in double-digit …