Ankur Jain

Ankur Jain is the founder and CEO of B9 Beverages, the maker of Bira 91 craft beers. Launched in early 2015, Bira 91 is disrupting the beer market in India with its focus great taste, superior consumer experience and a clutter-breaking visual identity. Creative, urban, unorthodox and fun – Bira 91 has gone viral amongst urban millennials, and without having spent a single dollar on traditional marketing, has quickly displaced established incumbents to become the leader in the Indian specialty and draft beer segments. In 2016, Bira 91 announced its global foray with a launch in New York City and an exclusive partnership with the Tribeca Film Festival. In late 2015, B9 Beverages raised a round of investment from the legendary Silicon Valley based venture firm Sequoia Capital, making it the fund’s first investment in a beer company globally.

Born in New Delhi to an architect-urban planner father and an author-interior designer mother, Ankur is a serial entrepreneur who moved to the United States in 1998. He completed his Bachelor’s in Computer Science from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. After a brief stint at Motorola, Ankur co-founded a healthcare revenue management firm in New York City which was sold to a large healthcare provider network in 2007. Soon after, he moved back to his hometown and noticed that there weren’t many beers worth drinking in India and decided to solve that problem. Ankur got his start in the beer business in 2009 importing traditional beers from Europe and America to India. Inspired by the American craft beer revolution, he decided that it was time for a craft beer brand “Imagined in India” for the urban, millennial consumer in India and launched Bira 91.

Ankur has been in the Global 100 Young Social Entrepreneur list of Global Knowledge Foundation, Malaysia, and was included in the “Fortune India 40 Under 40” in 2016.