Corporate RAISING THE BAR

Anand Kripalu’s mandate while taking over the reins of Diageo India in 2014, was not just to turn around the debt-ridden United Spirits, but also drive cultural change in an industry tainted with unscrupulous practices

- AJITA SHASHIDHAR

A peg of Johnnie Walker Black Label with soda has been his favourite after a hard day’s work. Anand Kripalu, Managing Director and CEO, Diageo India, proudly calls himself a Black Label loyalist. “If you go to a bar anywhere in the world and you hear someone ordering a Black Label and soda, it has to be an Indian. I am a proud Indian who is a diehard Black Label and soda fan.”

At his sprawling apartment in South Mumbai, he effortlessly puts together a colourful whisky-based cocktail, Manhattan. “Earlier, if someone suggested a whisky cocktail, I would tell them not to spoil the whisky by adding other ingredients. The last seven years has enabled me to look at the world of spirits through a new lens,” he says. Not only has Kripalu’s perspective of alcohol consumption changed, the 62-year-old has been instrumental in bringing about an attitudinal change in India’s ₹40,000-crore alcohol beverage industry.

In an industry known for unscrupulous methods of doing business and lack of corporate governance, Kripalu’s mandate when he took over in 2014 was to ensure business was done the ‘right way’. State governments control alcohol sales in over 70 per cent of the states and greasing palms of government officials was the norm. “The toughest battle was doing business the right way,” says Kripalu. “We have walked out of many states, saying we will do business only the right way. In one state from being a market leader, we got wiped out to zero. They told us you either do it or you don’t and we said we will not. There was no other way of saying we have zero tolerance,” he adds. Some of the states, which earlier were not willing to relent to Diageo’s compliance norms, eventually turned around and have started doing business with them.