India is the world's largest Scotch Whisky market

Indians last year consumed a record 219 million bottles of Scotch whisky, nearly double that of the Americans

- Radhakrishnan Nair

In the late 1990s, when Scotch whisky brands were finally allowed to be sold legally in India after an import ban that lasted several decades, the big joke among Scottish distillers was that more Scotch is drunk in India than produced in Scotland. The implication, of course, was that India was the and of mass-produced bootleg Scotch.

The wheel, in many ways, has come full circle in recent times. Earlier this year, the Scotch Whisky Association, the official Scotch whisky maker's trade body in Scotland, announced that India had become the largest market for Scotch whisky in the world. Indians drank 219 million bottles of Scotch last year, as compared to France and the US; the second and third-placed countries drank 205 m and 137 m bottles each.

According to the SWA, the Indian Scotch consumption has grown 200 per cent over the last decade. And it seems to have scaled new highs during and after the pandemic. It grew by a staggering 60 per cent in 2021-22 alone. No large country in the world came anywhere close to these numbers. The US was at 9 per cent, and Brazil at 14 per cent.

Besides being a volume market, India has moved up the ladder considerably in terms of value as well. The local Scotch whisky market in 2022 was estimated to be worth $ 357 million, the world's 5th largest, after the US, France, Singapore and Taiwan. And the Indian value growth rate a phenomenal 93 per cent over the previous year.