As the party season beckons, Anish Reddy’s Pursue hard seltzer is set to up your pep quotient with its punchy flavours.
Picture this. A bunch of alcohol crackerjacks gathered around a basket spilling over with flavours: Berries, mint, mango, chilli, white tea, strawberry, rose, mosambi, peach… Bartenders and mixologists busy coupling bite with zest, relish with spice, tart with tang, and a kick with a punch for a magical hard seltzer.
They mix.
They taste.
They repeat. Persistently. Not once. Not twice.
The mavens do 250 taste trials to create a sparkling, delicious, and boozy hard seltzer. The name: Pursue. A Made in India hard seltzer with 5 per cent alcohol content (AbV), less than 1 per cent sugar, and fewer than 110 calories. A drink groovy in taste. And utterly glam in a translucent bottle wearing a bad-ass neck label.
A magic potion to beat ’em all!
That 18-month doggedness of CEO & Founder Anish Reddy — a man with a lavish alcohol lineage (I’ll come to the lineage later) — to create a magic potion got the world tiddly and his mantelpiece full. All before turning even one; Pursue is the winner of 3-Star Gold (highest ranking) from the International Taste Institute (ITI) for taste and a Bronze ranking from the Penta Design Awards for original and innovative design.
Straight off a long-haul flight, Anish sidestepped the jetlag to talk of the four Pursue flavours. His certainly wasn’t a prosaic portrait of the Pursue repertory; he has numbered them and elucidated the whys and the one-liner punches of each (the flavour descriptors are his, not mine):
Mosambi and Mint (Magic Lane) is an ode to nostalgia. The rejuvenating blend of juicy Mosambi (Sweet Lime) and fresh mint will take you on a trip to your childhood through the magical lanes of India.
Strawberry & Rose (Way Up High) defines the elixir of love and will make you fall in love again.
Mango & Chilli (Far Far Away) will set you on an adventure to a place far-far away. It gives you the taste of newness whenever you find your destination.
Peach & White Tea (Behind the Moon) will raise your spirits and take you to the moon and will instantly put you in the groove.
A hard seltzer that’s a disruptor…
Anish surely knows alcohol. He is a fourth-generation entrepreneur from Chennai whose family supplied canned fruits to the British Indian Army during World War II. The family has been involved in the alcohol industry for more than 50 years and currently runs nine distilleries in India. In addition to contract producing McDowell’s No. 1, Royal Challenge, and other Diageo India brands, they also produce their own, volume-driven brands of whiskey, brandy, and rum.
But it was a hard seltzer that Anish wanted on the bar counter as a copybook alternative to the commonplace beer and hard spirits. “With the ever-evolving pool of consumers who are becoming more experiential and quality driven, the idea behind Pursue is to promote personal freedom, reshape conventions around alcoholic beverages, and create a sparkling indulgence for everyone. We want people to pursue a place that is theirs to experience and one without compromise,” says Anish, who divides his time between Miami and Chennai.
Aware that hard seltzers have a miniscule following in India, Anish set out not only to promote a brand but also build a culture. “Pursue is not merely about selling a drink to the curious, it is about educating the people about the brand, disrupting the long-held alcohol truism, and building a culture that changes the way people perceive alcohol,” adds Anish, a self-professed ‘curiously-minded student’, who holds an undergraduate degree in Accounting & Finance from Purdue University, Indiana, and an MBA from Babson College, Massachusetts.
…For the next generation to Pursue!
For Anish, Pursue had to be more than a magic potion. It was meant to be a fresh, contemporary concept and a reflection of the determined energy and influence of a new generation. The name epitomises the spirit of individualism, happiness, and freedom, and the design had to be a conversation starter.
For that mirthful conversation to begin, Anish joined hands with Olsson Barbieri design firm and Rotterdam-based artist Joren Joshua — known for his witty and absurd illustrations — created the caricature neck labels that immediately lend whim to a Bacchanalian moment. And yes, there’s glint in the bottle too — the bottles visually refract when filled with the effervescent seltzer.
Available in Maharashtra, Delhi, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Goa, Pondicherry, Pursue will soon spread its spirit across India. When Anish is not hunching over the tasting table to add new flavours to the Pursue gallery, he is strategizing on promoting Pursue and creating a new alcohol culture. In the midst of a basketful of flavours and a cabal of bartenders and mixologists, he’d tell you all about how Elon Musk’s disruptive creativity and footballer Tom Brady’s grit have influenced his life and work. Of course, all this with a Peach & White Tea Hard Seltzer in his hand. For him, it is always a hard seltzer time. It is always 5 o’clock somewhere!
At a glance:
Flavours available: Peach & White Tea, Strawberry & Rose, Mango & Chilli, Mausambi & Mint
Website: pursuedrinks.com
Instagram: @pursuedrinks Available in: Maharashtra, Delhi, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Goa, Pondicherry