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Diageo launches cocktail lab in India

27 November 2024 By Eloise Feilden

UK-based drinks giant Diageo has opened a Flavour Lab in India to test potential products for increasingly-affluent domestic consumers.

Diageo’s new Flavour Lab in India, which opened in September, is a sign of the multinational spirits company’s acknowledgement of the growing buying power of Indian consumers.

The test lab is being used to evaluate products designed to be marketed specifically to drinkers in India, before potentially expanding to the rest of the world.

Hina Nagarajan, chief executive officer of Diageo India, told Bloomberg that the sheer volume of legal drinking age (LDA) consumers in the next few years is cause to consider the market’s potential

“You’re talking a hundred million new consumers in India, 25% of the world’s legal drinkers over [the next] five years,” she said.

Diageo’s lab, kitted out with a lounge for customers, is located on the third floor of the Vydehi Institute of Medical Sciences and Research Centre. Diageo chose the hospital setting because hospitals have a license to handle high volumes of alcohol for for medical purposes. The 1,858-square-meter space holds labs, tasting rooms and meeting spaces.

The lab offers free tastings, and patrons can sample a couple of cocktails as well as three rums, whiskies and other dar, aged spirits that are not yet commercially released.

According to Bloomberg, the company sees an opportunity to build its own brands in India. The lab is equipped with a maturation room and miniature casks, as well as a 20-litre capacity small-batch distillery.

Vikram Damodaran, chief innovation officer at Diageo India, said the company is responding to changing “consumer faces” and expectations. That means switching “to a center that actually [is] investing in long-term innovation, long-term research, consumer sciences, sensory sciences,” he said.

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