The Pilot

July 2012. 2nd Semester of Civil Engineering. Phone rings. It's my friendAmol. “Hey Divyesh, What’s up? There is a great place for fresh (then fresh, actually craft)beersin Pune. Let's plan to go there.” The day after, I was in Pune at Corinthians , housing India's first microbrewery Doolally.The feeling after the first sip of that beer is still fresh in my mind. I had not tasted anything like it before. The flavour justexploded in my mouth. It was amazing. I chatted the server up to know more. I didn't know until then that beer was capable of being so much more. I fell in love with the idea craft beer.. This is how my quest with craft beer began.

It became an annual ritual; at least once a year I would travel to Pune to just have craft beer. (as if we were having some sort of a long distance relationship).Slowly more breweries started popping up in Pune. I was equally psyched by all of them; every beer having its own story. Eventually, Barking Deer opened up in Mumbai. And my Pune ritual ended.

What first attracted me to craft beer was its taste. But I realised it's not the taste that really calls me, it's the feeling of superiority that I get (saying this at the cost of sounding smug, but it's true!). Having craft beer is a different experience altogether.

I was so deeply into it by now that I was considering opening my own brewery. There were only two problems: I had no money & I had no knowledge. I started reading up about how to start a microbrewery. It even got to the extent of me hunting for places for a brewery. I had no clue where the investment was going to come from. After doing some math, I pitched this idea to my friends. They all loved the idea. My confidence was sky high and the very next morning I pitched it to my Dad! I got a classic Indian parent reaction with “tu daaru bechega?”(you will sell alcohol?). And it didn't end there. I even went ahead and told him the investment amount I needed. “Do you even know how many zeroes it has?” was all I got. I was twenty two years old and stupid and had no idea of running a business. That was the end of that chapter.I moved on, got a Diploma in Event Management and worked for sometime thereafter. I eventually started my own wedding planning business which I operated for three and a half years.

Fast forward to the year 2017. I landed in an entrepreneurship course. We were supposed to write about the venturewe intended to undertake. I was sitting with my laptop wonderingwhat to write. I was obviously planning to write about expanding my wedding planning business. I typed out an entire page about how I wanted to expand it and suddenly I had an epiphany! (Well, not really, but it sounds damn cool). Is this my calling? Do I want to do this for rest of my life? Is this something I love doing?

And at that moment craft beer was back in my life!