The Downfall of Beera 91: How a simple name change led to the downfall of India’s coolest beer brand

The famous playwright William Shakespeare once said: “What’s in a name?” For India’s coolest beer brand, Bira 91, it was all about its name, as a slight name change led to its downfall.

Investor D Muthukrishnan on Friday explained in a social media post how a slight change in the brand’s name led to its downfall, with the company’s employees forcing the founder to resign.

“Bira 91 has been one of the successful startup stories of the past decade. It is a popular craft beer brand. It has been growing well. The reality is stranger than you can imagine. A procedural error brought the entire company down, the founder has now even been forced out by company employees,” he wrote in a post on X (formerly Twitter).

Furthermore, it was stated that the collapse of Bira 91 began in late 2023. At this time, the company, managed by B9 Beverages Private Limited, was preparing for its long-awaited IPO.

In an effort to comply with listing standards, the company’s management decided to drop the word ‘private’ and adopt B9 Beverages Limited as its name. In January 2024, the company officially changed its name to the Registrar of Companies (RoC), but the company’s packaging, labels and licenses were still printed under the old name since distribution was made to existing stock.

But how has this change affected the country’s coolest beer brand?

According to Muthukrishnan, “All hell broke loose then. All the states immediately banned the sale of Bira 91, treating the new name as a different entity. They demanded new legal approvals, trademark approvals, product registrations, and new licenses for each variant. Google it and find out. This led to one problem after another. Once a company seemed thriving, it might not You can even survive.”

As a result, distribution was halted overnight, and inventory worth crores of rupees remained unsold at the company’s warehouses. During July-September 2024, Bira’s sales volumes declined approximately 25 percent year-on-year.

FY2024 revenue fell to around Rs 638 crore from Rs 824 crore in FY2023, and the company posted a net loss of Rs 748 crore, one of its worst years ever. Although the brand finally received renewed approvals in most states and production gradually resumed in early 2025, momentum for the Bira 91 brand was lost, and the IPO plan was postponed indefinitely.

The Chennai-based investor said bureaucratic red tape in India led to the collapse of the brand. He added that former Diageo India CEO Hina Nagarajan had once said that she had retained the name United Spirits instead of changing it to Diageo India Limited to avoid major disruptions to the business.

“Although what happened to Bera is deeply unfair, you have to accept India’s reality. Proper procedures, compliance and documentation are extremely important. The rules are so complex that you should never stop taking expert advice. What you assume shouldn’t work in reality, and may even go against you,” he said at the end of his article.