Inside the $6B Scotch Whiskey Industry – Opportunities, Tech & Building a Fund | Ep 71
episode
Funds and Founders: Untold Journeys Behind Their Breakthroughs
1h 9m
1 speaker
8 chapters
transcribed 13 days ago
Transcript
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Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
What is the guest’s background and what projects are they currently working on in the Scotch whiskey industry?
What are some opportunities you think that an entrepreneur listening
let's break down this a supply chain and think about this from every different step.
Are people open to change here?
How large is the global Scotch whiskey export market and where is the real money concentrated?
Are is it easy for someone to build and then go to distillers?
Why does forecasting Scotch whiskey demand require a 30‑year outlook?
If if you're a big big player, um difficult to to change.
What AI‑driven tech opportunities exist across distillation, warehousing, and consumer engagement?
I
don't know how you're drinking.
How is the customer experience for whiskey evolving with a new generation of drinkers?
This twenty year old, twenty-five year old who's never had a whiskey before
What led the guest to build a private‑client cask warehouse and how does it work?
I don't appreciate that.
How was a $12 M private‑equity whiskey fund raised, deployed, and ultimately exited?
I'm I'm not a big wine person.
What excites the guest about the next 2‑5 years for whiskey innovation and growth?
If you went to an Indian wedding maybe ten years ago, I would say everyone's drinking Johnny Walker.
Why don't you talk about as you're raising the fun
let's break down
Hey
guys,
welcome back to Funds and Founders. We have Rikesh on today and I reached out on LinkedIn. We sort of connected. I find what you're doing super interesting. You've been in the liquor industry and whiskey industry for quite a while. But why don't you just quickly tell folks what you're working on, what you're building? I have this joke where I have everyone plug themselves in the beginning because retention on YouTube is like two minutes, and so we plug you now plug you at the end, but just very quickly, why don't you cover what you're working on and what your background is.
Yeah, so I work in the Scotch whiskey industry, which is a very fun industry to be part of. I've been part of it for ten years. I'm working on a few different companies, uh one in the Scotch industry. So one is helping people that want to invest in whiskey as an alternative asset class. Um we can talk more about that. Two, uh a a new company, new project we're focused on On um actually helping people to celebrate milestones in their life through. private bottling and interesting cool experiences with whiskey. Um and the third project actually looking and this is very early stages, but looking at uh the effects or rather the advantages of blockchain, tokenization, um that whole world and how we could apply that to whiskey today, which is a six hundred year old industry.
Uh And sometimes it acts like it to be honest in terms of how archaic things are. So I think there's a lot of opportunity really for um, you know, disruption and doing new fun things. Peace.
I wanted to jump in and sort of get your take on where does the opportunity lie in this space? What's something that people underestimate about this space? And maybe if you can just break down the industry real quick on like roughly how big the industry is, what the market size is for anyone listening who potentially wants to build for this space and then let's go into potential opportunities that you see for people to build. Something in the space on
Yeah, so look, it's a the Scotch whiskey industry is a a US six billion dollar industry. So it's uh you know, that that's the number of uh And that's worldwide, right? Yeah, that's the value of total exports um of Scotch whiskey, you know, last year, roughly. Um, so it's massive, right? And we're just talking about Scotch whiskey. Of course, there's bourbon, there's uh whiskeys made all over the world, then you know, there there's all kinds of variations. But we're I'm just talking about the specific Scotch whiskey industry, right? So it's a it's a very, very large industry. Um, you know, whiskey was um mo most people claim or uh or or s or so they say was founded in Scotland, right? So this is the origins of of whiskey.
And I think in terms of opportunities, the what what's important to understand, right, why why I got into whiskey ten years ago and I I researched a lot and and I used to be in the wine industry before this, right? So I was researching kind of scotch and rum and Tequila, Vogue, all kinds of different things. areas and what's unique about Scotch whiskey and and and the most important thing to understand, right, is to make a eighteen year old Scotch, right, like a Highland Park or a McCallan or Lafroy takes eighteen years, right? You can't you can't make that happen any faster, right? If everyone in the world tomorrow started drinking vodka, they would just ramp up making more vodka because it doesn't
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the guest’s background and what projects are they currently working on in the Scotch whiskey industry?
0:00–0:09
2
How large is the global Scotch whiskey export market and where is the real money concentrated?
0:09–0:14
3
Why does forecasting Scotch whiskey demand require a 30‑year outlook?
0:14–0:17
4
What AI‑driven tech opportunities exist across distillation, warehousing, and consumer engagement?
0:17–0:19
5
How is the customer experience for whiskey evolving with a new generation of drinkers?
0:19–0:23
6
What led the guest to build a private‑client cask warehouse and how does it work?
0:23–0:24
7
How was a $12 M private‑equity whiskey fund raised, deployed, and ultimately exited?
0:24–0:26
8
What excites the guest about the next 2‑5 years for whiskey innovation and growth?
0:26–1:08:51
Speakers
1 identifiedMore from Funds and Founders: Untold Journeys Behind Their Breakthroughs
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