- **Allied Blenders & Distillers is a company built on a single, enduring idea: capturing drinkers as they upgrade. It entered the mass premium segment in 1988 with Officer’s Choice Whisky, a brand designed to be the first step up from country liquor, and that one product became one of the world’s highest-selling whiskies. Everything the company has done since-spinning off new whisky brands for maturing consumers, building a luxury division with a Bollywood star, and methodically taking control of its own alcohol and packaging supply chain-is a variation on that original approach of owning the consumer’s next pour.** # Business segments A single spirits engine operating at every price tier, from the mass-market whisky that built the house to a new luxury platform, all increasingly fed by its own distilleries and bottle-making plants. ## 1. Mass-premium whisky and spirits: the anchor that pays for everything else **Officer’s Choice Whisky is the gravitational centre of the company, holding over 40% of India’s mass-premium whisky segment and generating the highest margins in its class, which funds the build-out of every younger brand above it.** - **The original upgrade ladder** - launched in 1988, Officer’s Choice was positioned as the accessible step-up for consumers leaving country liquor for Indian-made Indian liquor (IMIL), and it has led its segment for more than a decade, selling 16.9 million cases in FY26. - **Margin engine, not just a volume play** - the brand delivers 40%+ gross margins, described as the highest in the mass-premium category, because its decades-old recall keeps trade spending low relative to younger brands. - **A global heavyweight from a single market** - it ranks as the world’s 5th largest whisky brand by volume and is India’s No. 1 exported whisky, with leadership in the Middle East and a growing African footprint, which gives the company a natural hedge through export revenues. ## 2. Prestige-and-above whiskies: the premiumisation flywheel **Three millennial whisky brands-ICONIQ White, Officer’s Choice Blue, and Sterling Reserve B7-have together crossed half of the company’s total volume, pulling the entire portfolio upward in both price and perception.** - **A family of millionaire brands** - Officer’s Choice Blue (prestige segment) and Sterling Reserve B7 (semi-premium) are each million-case brands in their own right, with B7 blending Scotch malts and Indian grain spirits to create seven distinct tasting notes, which gives the company a ladder of credible whiskies between mass and luxury. - **Value grows faster than volume** - the prestige-and-above segment contributed 57.3% of overall value in FY26 against 47.2% of volume, meaning every case sold here is worth more to the business than a case from the mass-premium anchor, and that gap widens as the mix shifts. - **Non-whisky bridges** - Kyron Premium Brandy and the newly launched Golden Mist Brandy (with its distinctive 180 ml “Hippy pack” in Karnataka) extend the premiumisation logic into brandy, capturing consumers in states where brandy is the dominant spirit. ## 3. ABD Maestro: the luxury playground built with a partner **A dedicated subsidiary, majority-owned by ABD with Bollywood star Ranveer Singh as a 20% creative and business partner, has assembled ten super-premium and luxury brands in under two years-without betting the balance sheet on any single one.** - **Bought, not just built** - the portfolio was assembled through a “Build, Buy and Partner” model, including the outright acquisition of brands like Woodburns Whisky, Pumori Gin, and Segredo Aldeia Rum from Fullarton Distilleries for ₹39.50 crores, and a distribution deal with Roust Corporation for Russian Standard Vodka, so the platform reached roughly 80% addressable market presence within its first year. - **Scarcity as a signal** - the platform’s halo product is The Collective, a 34-year-old single malt from Macallan Distillery limited to 60 decanters priced at ₹11 lakhs each, with over half its allocation pre-ordered, which tells the trade and the consumer that ABD Maestro can play at the very top of the spirits hierarchy. - **A separate go-to-market machine** - a dedicated team of roughly 70 people focuses exclusively on premium on-premise accounts, mixology, and travel retail across four international airports (Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai, Lucknow), insulating luxury brands from the mass-distribution muscle that moves Officer’s Choice. - **Early proof in metal** - the portfolio has already collected over 30 global awards, including a Grand Gold and Revelation Blended Whisky Award for Woodburns at Spirits Selection by Concours Mondial de Bruxelles 2025, which gives a young luxury house the credibility it cannot yet claim from age alone. # Backward integration: the margin story under construction **ABD is methodically bringing its key inputs-extra-neutral alcohol, malt, and PET bottles-in-house across four distillery sites, a move designed to add roughly 300 basis points to EBITDA margins by FY28.** - **From buyer to maker of alcohol** - the company operates two active ENA distilleries (Rangapur in Telangana at roughly 60 million litres per annum, and Aurangabad in Maharashtra at roughly 11 MLPA, acquired in December 2024) and is building two more, with the goal of 100% captive ENA and 100% captive malt, so it stops paying a supplier’s margin on the core raw material of every spirit it sells. - **Making its own bottles** - a PET bottle manufacturing unit at Rangapur, commissioned in September 2025, can produce over 600 million bottles a year and already covers 70-75% of the company’s PET packaging needs, turning a cost centre into an EBITDA-accretive unit from Q3 FY26 onward. - **Quality infrastructure to match** - a high-end research centre in Aurangabad supports premium product development across all categories, and the majority of owned units carry ISO 22000:2018 food-safety certification, so the manufacturing backbone is built for the premiumisation ambition, not just for scale. # Distribution and exports: the reach that turns liquid into sales **A network of 80,000-plus retail touchpoints across more than 30 states and a distinct, high-margin export operation to 36 countries ensure that every brand, from mass to luxury, finds its shelf.** - **Pervasive domestic reach** - the company covers over 90% of the width of Indian spirits retail through 4,718 dealers and distributors, selling via open-market distributors, state government corporations, and the defence canteen (CSD) channel, which alone represents an estimated 12 million cases annually and where key brands secured approval in FY26. - **Exports as a higher-margin twin** - the export business runs on an asset-light model with profitability roughly 1.3 times that of domestic operations and working capital about one-third, because the company ships brands rather than building infrastructure abroad, expanding from 23 to 36 countries in FY26 alone. - **Luxury gets its own touchpoints** - ABD Maestro has built roughly 5,000 premium on-premise and off-premise accounts, plus travel retail at four international airports, with AI-led personalised campaigns and experience-led activations, so the luxury portfolio never competes for attention on the same shelf as Officer’s Choice. # Group structure and partners **ABD uses subsidiaries and strategic partnerships to isolate its luxury bets, secure raw-material capacity, and simplify its corporate structure, while keeping the flagship company focused on its core spirits engine.** - **A luxury subsidiary with star power** - ABD Maestro Pvt. Ltd. is 80% owned by ABD and 20% by Ranveer Singh’s Oh Five Oh Talent LLP, with Singh serving as Business and Creative Partner, so the luxury platform carries its own brand identity and risk profile separate from the mass-market parent. - **Distillery acquisitions for integration** - Minakshi Agro Industries LLP (Aurangabad distillery) became a wholly owned subsidiary in December 2024, and in March 2026 ABD approved entering into agreements to acquire up to a 50% stake in Kion Blenders Industries (Vizianagaram distillery), which would make it a subsidiary, giving ABD direct control over the new capacity being built for captive ENA supply. - **Simplifying the structure** - a Scheme of Amalgamation approved in November 2025 merges two wholly owned domestic subsidiaries (one bottling, one non-operating) into the parent company, reducing the number of legal entities and associated compliance burdens.