|  The seminar was inaugurated by Herr Bernhard Steinruecke, Director General of the Indo German Chamber of Commerce. While welcoming the delegation, he hit the nail on the head as he gave an accurate picture of the Indian wine industry starting from the late Kanwal Grover (unfortunately, he overlooked another earlier pioneer, Sham Chougule, who started a sparkling wine producing facility earlier than Grover, though Grover claims to have planted the experimental crops throughout India earlier. Chougule set up Champagne India Ltd. in 1982 and launched Omar Khayyam sparkling wine for export in 1986. He started Indage India Pvt. Ltd. in 1985 and launched the first "Indian champagne" Marquise de Pompadour in India in 1988. Grover came along a couple of years later.)
The DG did not mince words in telling the visitors that India was a long term market that needed a regular appearance. Coming once with a delegation and forgetting about the market for the next 3-4 years was not going to cut it and they needed to decide whether the Indian market was for them.
As the first of the three speakers, Subhash Arora carried his point forward and said that in India where finding the right importer is most critical and an extremely difficult task, a participative and partnership-type approach would be better, besides good pricing. Frequent visits to the market by the producer are quite important too. Without sounding too negative, he warned them about the government regulation and procedural hurdles which the importers as well as domestic producers face in some form, with a view to appreciate the importers’ predicament and stand, once they started doing the business.
Sudhakar Kasture, an ex-government official now looking after ‘Helpline Impex’ spoke at length about the taxation structure of wines and spirits and the complications because of the several states acting as individual countries and framing their own excise laws.
Chris Pohl, a German consultant from South Africa who has been a resident of India for a decade and is well aware of the travails and tribulations of the wine and food importers in India, talked in detail about how the costs are escalated 7-10 times because of the various taxes and the system, by illuminating through a cost card. He advised the delegation that no profits are possible in less than 3-5 years during which one has to continue to make investments. In fact, he quoted a painful personal experience in which he claimed to have suffered because of the Italian promoters losing steam after less than 2 years despite having been told about the timeline and they pulled out of the project before they could reach the point of stabilization.
 Earlier, in her Welcome Note, Frau Birgit Fritsche from Bundesanstalt für Landwirtschaft und Ernährung (BLE)- a representative of German Federal Ministry of Food, Agriculture and Consumer Protection (BMELV) which had sponsored this visit, was positive about the long term participation of the German producers in the expanding Indian market and assured the delegates as well as the Chamber that her organization would be supportive of the wine producer’s efforts to make inroads into the market. Everyone supported Herr Bernhard Steinruecke’s view that Riesling was an excellent grape for the Indian food and was fruity enough for their palate, deserving a spot in the wine lists.
Mr. Peter Deubet, the Deputy Director General of the Indo German Chamber of Commerce, appreciated the forthrightness of the presentation by Subhash Arora and commented that this was the ground reality of the wine marketing in India. One has to work with the systems and the government policy to become successful even in the current scenario in the domestic market.
The delegation also organised a tasting of wines from their principals at the San-Qi Restaurant at the Four Seasons the next day.
Subhash Arora
Tags: Bernhard Steinruecke, Indo German Chamber of Commerce, Sudhakar Kasture, Chris Pohl, Birgit Fritsche, Riesling |