Bira 91 secures $4.3M funding from Sixth Sense Ventures

B9 Beverages, owner of craft beer company Bira 91, has raised $4.3 million in fresh funding as part of its Pre-Series C round from Sixth Sense Ventures, at an estimated post money valuation of $246 million.

Sixth Sense Ventures was allotted five lakh Pre-Series C preference shares for Rs 30 crore according to documents filed with regulators, sourced from business intelligence platform Paper.vc.

Bira 91 has raised $74 million in funding so far from angel investors including Bollywood bigwigs Farhan and Zoya Akhtar, Ritesh Sidhwani, as well as prominent names in the tech sector such as Flipkart chief executive Kalyan Krishnamurthy.

Paper.vc says that Bira 91 has continued to raise capital from HNIs despite bringing onboard institutional investors, unlike most other startups. Sequoia Capital is the largest institutional investor in the company. Brussels-based investment firm Sofina had led its $50 million Series B funding in May last year.

In April 2019, Bira 91 forayed into mass beer market with the launch of a sub-brand Boom, currently available across key markets like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, and West Bengal.

The company expects to expand its production footprint five-fold to 2,000,000 barrels before the summer of 2019 from the current capacity of 350,000 barrels.