While our government has always recognised the importance of ever-incoming revenue from the country’s established alcohol industry, who would have thought that one day our government would launch an alcoholic beverage?
Launched under the Modi-government led Ministry of Tribal Affairs’ value-addition scheme ‘Van Dhan Vikas Karyakram’, the low-ABV beverage is fermented from the rural-grown mahua flowers. The beverage is marketed under the named Mahua Nutrabeverage and will be bottled at 5% ABV. A 750 ml of the drink will be priced at INR 700, and the consumers will have 6 fruit flavours to choose from in the market.
The beverage is being marketed as a highly nutritional drink, with the government planning to launch the product all across the country. It has been developed through a collaboration between IIT Delhi and TRIFED (Tribal Cooperative Marketing Development Federation of India), taking around 2 years of research to present itself as the ready-to-sell product it is now.
With the launch of Mahua Nutrabeverage, the Tribal Affairs ministry will be trying its hands at the manufacturing and bottling of an alcoholic beverage for the first time since its inception. The ministry plans to add more flavours, like ginger, pomegranate and carom seeds, to the product range to appeal better to its target consumer-base. The mahua flowers will be sourced from regions like Bastar in Chhattisgarh, which will help the rural and tribal communities of the regions in generating a regular flow of income.
This beverage seems to be as light as the popular Bacardi breezers and the government hopes to see the Indian consumers develop a taste for it. I suggest we try Mahua Nutraveberage, for the good of our fellow hard-working Indians!
