The Untold Story of Whiskey as an Asset Class | Rare Whiskey Holdings | Rickesh Kishnani

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Funds and Founders: Untold Journeys Behind Their Breakthroughs 1h 9m 1 speaker 8 chapters transcribed 17 days ago
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What makes whiskey a unique alternative asset class for investors?

Rickesh Kishnani 0:00
And I think right now from an investment point of view, I a lot of people are looking for alternative assets, things that are stable, you know, make those kind of double digit returns without the high volatility of what we've seen so far in equity markets. So I think whiskey offers that. It doesn't follow oil, it doesn't follow gold, it doesn't follow Bitcoin. It's it's on its own trajectory, which is what you want if you're going for real diversity.
Abhinav Sinha 0:25
Hey guys, welcome back to the show. Today's guest Rikesh is a really interesting story. He runs a company called Rare Risky Holdings, one of the first people to start a PE fund to invest in whiskey as an asset class. The fund was oversubscribed, nearly doubled in value, and now Rare Risky Holdings is a one-stop shop for whiskey enthusiasts. I never thought that a bottle of whiskey could be a really good investment, but after this conversation, I feel like Like, not might not be a bad, a bad path for diversification. He brought up an interesting story on the episode where he mentioned that the younger generation in countries like China, India, Middle East, they no longer are looking for a smooth whiskey or just a drink or you know, popular, expensive whiskey.
Abhinav Sinha 1:08
They want an experience, and experience only comes if you really understand the nature behind the drink. And that's part of the problem he's trying to solve. involved with his company and it's just been a great conversation. Hey guys, welcome back to Funds and Founders. We have Rikesha 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?

How big is the global Scotch whiskey export market and where is the growth?

Abhinav Sinha 1:39
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?
Rickesh Kishnani 1:53
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 c a new company, a new project we're focused on Um actually helping people to celebrate milestones in their life through private bottlings and interesting cool experiences with whiskey. 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 that whole world and how we could apply that to whiskey today, which is a 600 year old industry.
Rickesh Kishnani 2:50
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.
Abhinav Sinha 3:02
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 uh
Rickesh Kishnani 3:28
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,
Abhinav Sinha 3:37
right?

Why does forecasting whiskey demand require a 30‑year horizon?

Rickesh Kishnani 3:38
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 specifically Scotch whiskey industry, right? So it's a it's a very, very large industry. Um, you know, whiskey was

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