After seeing Ashmira first-hand, my read is simple — you've built the hard part: a working distillery and a product in development. What usually decides whether a craft distillery thrives is everything around the liquid: the brand, the route to market, the team, and the experience.
That is the half you've asked me to take on — and the half I've built my career around. Rather than send a fixed plan, I've made this interactive so you can shape it: choose your ambition, weigh how much to lay down versus sell fast, and pick the building blocks that matter most. What you choose becomes the agenda when we sit down.
Nothing here is final. Figures are indicative and meant to frame direction. A fully costed business draft follows once we agree the shape.
I sit at an unusual intersection — I understand what happens inside the still and what happens on the factory floor, the shelf, the glass, and the balance sheet. That combination is rare in Indian spirits, and is exactly what an early-stage craft distillery needs.
I can stand up the entire commercial, brand, experience and operations side of Ashmira ground-up — with the production fluency to keep it true to the liquid. The iStill-Play app I built for you was the first glimpse — this is the rest of what I'd bring.
A strong foundation, with the commercial layer still to be built. The opportunity is precisely that — we design it right from the start.
At ~2,000 litres of new-make spirit a day, Ashmira shouldn't try to win on volume. It should win on agility, margin and story. The core insight: the distillery can fill far more cask than the business can afford to hold.
Whisky doesn't cost you when you distil it — it costs you to keep it, for years, while it matures and a meaningful share evaporates in the North-Indian heat. So the real question is never "how much can we make?" It is how much to lay down for the future, versus sell quickly to fund the business today.
Gin, vodka, white & lightly-aged spirits, RTDs, limited releases, and contract distilling. Its job: cover operating costs and fund the maturing malt.
The premium single malt, laid down to mature, funded by the fast lane, sized to what the business can comfortably hold — and sold honestly.
Tell me your ambition and pick the building blocks that matter most. The panel updates live — there are no wrong answers, only direction.
As a fractional founding advisor — senior direction and oversight, while the team I help you hire carries execution. Phased, so you commit in steps and see value before you scale spend.
Beyond the retainer, value can be structured through:
We can flex this mix to your cash position — a lighter cash retainer balanced by equity or success fees, for example. The right blend is something we shape together.
You've made the spirit. Let's give it a brand worth its quality, a route to the right customers, an experience people travel for, and a team to carry it. Bring your numbers — I'll bring the plan, sized to them.
Send your selections above, and we'll lock a time to go deeper.
From here it's short: this session to agree the shape and priorities → a costed plan and a simple agreement → kickoff. My aim is to have us working together in weeks, not months.