Medusa Goes Kiwi: Can a ₹58-Crore Indian Beer Brand Conquer New Zealand?

For an Indian beer brand, entering New Zealand is a curious proposition.

The country already has a mature beer culture, established local brewers and consumers who are used to having plenty of choice. Yet that is precisely what Medusa Beverages appears to be betting on.

The Delhi-based beer company has entered New Zealand this month, following its expansion into the GCC earlier this year. The move marks the next leg of Medusa’s attempt to turn itself from an Indian growth story into a globally recognised beer brand.

The immediate numbers are relatively measured. Medusa is targeting sales of 10,000 cases in its first year and plans to eventually reach 1,000 liquor stores across New Zealand. But the long-term ambition is considerably larger. The company says it wants to capture one-third of the country’s retail beer market by 2029.

That target puts the New Zealand launch in a different frame.

This is not simply an export exercise designed to test whether an Indian beer can find a few customers abroad. Medusa is attempting to build a distribution network, establish retail visibility and create enough consumer familiarity to compete in a market where beer is already deeply embedded in drinking culture.

And unlike a purely bootstrapped expansion, Medusa is making the bet with outside capital behind it.

A ₹58-crore company with a global ambition

Medusa reported revenue of ₹58 crore in FY25, up 16.5% from ₹49.8 crore in FY24, according to Inc42’s financial database. It reported a net loss of ₹4.2 crore during the year. That figure is worth putting next to the company's earlier projections.

In December 2024, as per media reports, founder and CEO Avneet Singh had said Medusa expected gross revenue of about ₹180 crore in FY25, up from roughly ₹133 crore in FY24. The final revenue figure reported by Inc42 is considerably lower, although the two figures may reflect different revenue definitions.

What is clearer is that Medusa is still a relatively small company compared with the ambition of becoming a major international beer brand.

It is also not bootstrapped.

In January 2025, Medusa raised ₹56 crore in a Series A round led by investors Amal N Parikh and Ashwin Kedia. The round included Ramesh Damani, Nikhil Garg, Crest Opportunities and high-net-worth investors from Singapore, the UK and UAE, according to reports. Inc42 currently puts Medusa’s total funding at more than $6.5 million, with the January 2025 Series A as its latest disclosed round.

The fresh capital was intended to expand manufacturing and distribution, increase the company’s retail footprint and support its geographic expansion. At the time of the fundraise, Medusa was available in about 7,000 retail outlets across seven states and was looking to enter markets including Assam, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.

The company has therefore been building the financial and physical infrastructure for expansion before turning its attention overseas.

That matters because beer is an unusually capital-intensive category to scale. Manufacturing is only one part of the equation. There is distribution, inventory, excise and licensing, retail visibility, marketing and, in an overseas market, the additional cost of establishing a route to market.

The New Zealand bet is consequently not being made from a standing start.

But capital can buy distribution. It cannot automatically buy consumer loyalty.

The Indian beer brand goes looking for a new audience

Medusa’s route into New Zealand will initially run through distribution partnerships, with its portfolio entering bottle stores, off-licences and retail outlets, including supermarkets. The company also plans to enter the on-premise or HORECA segment.

The first-year plan is to sell 10,000 cases and eventually reach 1,000 liquor stores across the country.

For Medusa, the attraction lies partly in the market’s appetite for premium beer.

The company is positioning itself around quality and premiumisation rather than trying to compete purely on price. That gives it a potential entry point in a market where consumers already have a wide range of domestic and international beers to choose from.

“New Zealand is a natural next step in our international growth journey. It is a market where consumers have a deep appreciation for quality beer and are open to discovering new brands,” Amardeep Singh, Executive Director, Medusa Beverages, said.

The company says it is entering with a focused strategy, building through liquor and retail channels before expanding its presence in hospitality.

“We are entering with a focused strategy, building through liquor and retail channels first, while establishing a strong distribution network and earning consumer trust,” Singh said.

That last part may prove to be the more important piece.

For an Indian consumer brand, international expansion can look deceptively simple on paper. Put the product on shelves, find a distributor and start selling.

In reality, the challenge is less about getting a product into a country than getting consumers to choose it repeatedly.

Beer is particularly dependent on familiarity, availability and local relevance.

Medusa’s first-year target of 10,000 cases therefore looks less like an end goal and more like a foothold.

Global beer dreams have been tried before

Medusa is hardly the first Indian beer company to look beyond India.

Bira 91 once had a similarly expansive vision. The craft beer brand built an international presence while raising substantial amounts of institutional capital. Its investors included Japan’s Kirin and Peak XV, formerly Sequoia Capital India. By 2025, Bira had raised about $210 million, according to Reuters.

But Bira’s story also shows how quickly an aggressive growth strategy can run into trouble.

B9 Beverages, the company behind Bira 91, reported revenue of ₹638 crore in FY24, down from ₹824 crore the previous year. Its net loss widened to ₹748 crore. A change in the company’s legal status and the resulting re-registration requirements across states disrupted sales and led to an inventory write-off of about ₹80 crore.

The episode is a reminder of something that can get lost in the glamour of global expansion: alcohol is a heavily regulated, intensely local business.

A company can have a strong brand, deep-pocketed investors and international ambitions and still believed to find that the mechanics of getting a bottle onto a shelf are harder than expected.

Bira’s problems were not simply about international expansion. Much of the disruption happened in India. But that is precisely the lesson for companies such as Medusa. Scaling a beer business requires navigating multiple markets, regulatory systems and distribution structures simultaneously.

And Bira had a much larger financial base when it pursued its global ambitions.

Medusa’s FY25 revenue of ₹58 crore is less than one-tenth of Bira 91’s FY24 revenue.

That makes Medusa’s international ambition all the more interesting.

Kati Patang shows the other side of the equation

Kati Patang offers a different comparison.

The premium craft beer brand has also looked beyond India, with its products available in markets including the UK and US. Its experience shows that getting an Indian beer into foreign markets is possible. The harder task is building enough scale for those markets to materially change the economics of the business.

Kati Patang Lifestyle remains a relatively small listed alcobev company. Its financial performance has also been uneven, with losses continuing even as it works to expand its portfolio and distribution. In Q1 FY27, the company reported a 72% jump in beer sales volume and a 69% increase in gross revenue, while still reporting a net loss.

That makes Kati Patang useful not as a story of failure, but as a reminder of how long the journey from premium craft brand to scaled beverage business can be.

An international presence is one thing.

An international business is another.

The real test is the shelf

Medusa’s domestic business gives it a base from which to attempt the expansion.

The company says it sold about one million cases during FY25, with its premium portfolio accounting for around 15% of volumes. It has also been expanding its presence across Indian states and recently entered Karnataka with a planned investment of ₹10 crore.

But New Zealand presents a different problem.

At home, Medusa understands the consumer, the culture and the distribution environment. Abroad, it has to build those advantages from scratch.

Its strategy is therefore deliberately asset-light. Rather than immediately building its own brewing infrastructure in every new market, the company has been exploring exports and local brewing partnerships. That can reduce the upfront capital required to enter a market.

But it also makes the company dependent on local partners for distribution, regulatory navigation and retail relationships.

And availability matters enormously in beer.

A consumer cannot develop a habit around a brand that keeps disappearing from the shelf.

That is why the jump from 10,000 cases to 1,000 stores is more important than it first appears.

The first number measures demand.

The second measures distribution.

The bigger challenge is making the two work together.

Getting into 1,000 stores does not mean selling enough beer in 1,000 stores to justify staying there. A bottle occupying shelf space is only useful if consumers pick it up, buy it again and eventually look for it.

That is where Medusa’s New Zealand experiment will really be tested.

For now, the company is starting with distribution, retail presence and consumer engagement. Its first-year target is modest enough to function as a market test.

But the 1,000-store ambition asks whether Medusa can turn that test into a business.

And the one-third market-share target by 2029 is something else entirely. It asks whether an Indian beer brand can move from being an imported product to becoming a meaningful part of New Zealand’s beer culture.

That is a much bigger bet than 10,000 cases.

Medusa has the funding to make the first move. It has a growing domestic business to support the ambition. It has also chosen a relatively capital-efficient way of entering the market.

What it does not yet have is proof that consumers in a mature beer market will choose Medusa often enough to make the economics work.

That is the real experiment beginning in New Zealand.

Not whether an Indian beer can cross a border, but whether it can stay on the other side.