the market leader we have emerged as a number 2 having grown 230 this financial yearthe brand clocked rs 73 crore in its first year of operation even when it launched national operations in julyaugust last year the company is looking to close 202223 with a 230 growth at rs 24 crore it is looking to at least double its revenue growth in the next financial year the founders say they have the right mix to hit a highto be successful in this category you require deep insights into the spirits category even though we are a nonalcoholic brand we trend very close to spirits currently we are available across all major ecommerce platforms quick commerce stores and have an offline presence across 50 cities in 6000 retail outlets our d2c platform enables access to consumers across 400 cities across the country explains bhatia the company piloted its products in september 2019 as it was keen to gauge consumer reaction and receive feedback before a fullfledged launch jimmys cocktail began with an initial investment of rs 50 lakh by bhatia and others within a few months they raised a small seed round of rs 2 crore from angel investors and industry veteransso far the company has raised rs 9 crore from angel investors in two rounds some of their key investors are keki mistry vicechairman of hdfc group mirza baig founder of hammer head experiences and angad bhatia ceo of indiatimescomtesting timesthe biggest challenge for jimmys cocktails was making a product that was perfect in its balance of flavours when mixed with alcohol and when had straight up as a mocktail at the same time the founders wanted to keep an eye on caloriesso they tried several fruits botanicals natural oils and flavours using the inherent sweetness of fruits to minimise the need to add excess sugar it took us six months of experimenting daily to crack our first four flavours we have our own manufacturing facility in nashik and control our supply chain endtoend which enabled us to make several small batches during the initial trial phase a lot of our initial investment went into this says bhatiathe company piloted its products in september 2019 as it was keen to gauge consumer reaction and receive feedback before a fullfledged launch it realised that around 95 of beverage sales in india takes place in brickandmortar retail stores so jimmys products were first made available at major retail outletspandemic effectslike most businesses jimmys cocktails too was initially impacted during the pandemic there were fewer athome social gatherings and the company lost sales during several festive times such as holi diwali and new year however given that we were serving a large untapped market we managed to continue our growth momentum during the first wave and related lockdowns of retail shops and bars we pivoted to a d2c delivery model and came out with digital campaigns within a short period we were selling from our website reaching out to 400 locations