Cheers - "They who drink beer will think beer" - Washington Irving

Just a month ago I was in a sports bar watching this high profile match between Atletico Madrid and Barcelona in Madrid, Spain. The bar tender was very friendly and he opened up the tap, couple of hours even before the match could start. You see, soccer and beer are two things that go hand in hand. Then, be it a Champions League night or a La Liga or a Serie A – bars are always full and the kegs keep getting empty. I was with random people chanting and trying to match them with Spanish songs. I couldn’t stop noticing how fast the bar tenders were re-fuelling the kegs. So I went upto the bar tender looking for Tapas and asking him about his beer business in general. While I started with his beer business in general, during the conversation, I was made aware about the value of beer industry in Europe, and as I held my pint, I realized that it had tremendous potential post 2010 particularly in the emerging market, as companies look to divest to re-capture their debts while acquiring and partnering with firms.

Everywhere in Europe I couldn’t fail noticing the top brands like Ab-Inbev, Heineken, SAB Miller, Carlsberg, Asahi, Molson Coors, Diageo, and couple of Indian brands. I just was curious to understand the market, and was quiet astonished that the global beer market was valued approximately at around USD 510 Billion in 2008-2009. Europe accounted for 49.1% of the global beer market, followed by APAC – 22.9%, South and Central America – 8.6%, and MEA – 1.8%. Consolidation in the beer industry has changed the leading company, with AB-InBev becoming the market leader based on sales in 2008, followed by Heineken, pushing SAB Miller down to the third rank. A recent report by market business insights, show that the largest alcohol category will continue to be beer, cider and flavoured alcoholic beverages category, which is projected to reach USD 393 Billion in Europe & US by end of 2010 resulting in an increase of 5% from 2006 to 2010.

Image Source: Stealingshare.com

However, like any industry, the beer industry has its own concerns and issues. Beer is losing market share to wine and spirits, in part due to perceived health benefits from wine and high levels of innovation and premiumization in the spirits market. Growth in beer consumption volumes will be driven primarily by the increase in rising disposable income and beer-consuming population in emerging markets. The alcoholic drinks industry is being increasingly scrutinized by governments who are demanding stricter controls on advertising, and there are also concerns regarding the rising level of obesity in Europe and US. Also rising raw material prices have led global beer companies to increase the price of beer, especially in Europe. The beer brewing process is a very precise and therefore heavily controlled process where the exact amount of ingredients and heat as well as the right timing are crucial to its success. As enormous amounts of waste water and vast energy consumption are main concerns for a brewery, the following seven focus areas provide excellent examples of sustainable process implementation – energy usage, water conservation, recycling, heat recovery, CO2 recovery, transportation, and emissions reduction. A differentiated value proposition and meeting the triple bottom line  is something the industry players must look to build on to. Today, there is a greater demand towards ethical products – go green and recyclable are the mantra’s that these companies need to use in their supply chain.

And while I was thinking green, and I was awakened by the roaring Atletico fans as the ball saw the back of the net. Some of the regulars there got free beers, as their bar tender friend was a die-hard Atletico fan. Now I know why this industry is still booming…and as the old saying goes..."Beer needs Soccer and Soccer needs Beer...that's how life goes...". Cheers to that!

Image Source: images.allposters.com

Exercising your fingers through Mobile Social Networking

Gone are the days, when a simple telephony system used to exist, and a single dial would take more than couple of minutes to connect to the other side of the world. I vividly remember getting my maiden mobile phone when I was in my super early 20's. Those were the days, I could afford the bills on my own. Today, technology has improved immensely, and times have changed rapidly. Today, even kids who haven't reached a double digit age mark, have handsets in their pocket. In the 90's, some of these handsets used to be very costly, and only a privileged section (err shall I say - high income?) of the society, made utmost use of its existence. Today, there is a mobile phone for every 1.5 person, and moreover this figure is to further reduce every quarter, as mobile companies fight for a share in the market to improve their ARPU (Average Revenue Per User). While the developed nations have reached the mobile saturation, developing countries are yet to improve upon their customer base, while the least developed nations are yet to explore a lot of uncharted opportunities within their region. I had been travelling around for a while, and as I travel, I keep updating my social networking status to let my close friends know about my whereabouts, and lucky me that the friends I have, I do get calls and I end up meeting them in their town. As people and business move, people are looking for smarter ways of accessing the internet and staying in touch with their clients and dear ones. Today, data services have become the new source of income. There is a huge potential, especially amongst the young segment, which have different ways of communicating and keeping in touch. Today, mobile social networking (SN) is on a rise, given the increase in the number of hits to networking sites like Facebook, Orkut, Xing, LinkedIn etc. This new channel of communication in the internet has a huge penetration in young adult segments. More than 68% of young adults in U.S between the age of 18 and 21 reach out to a well known SN site, while a little more than 42% of the adults above 21 in U.S reach out to SN websites. The trend is surely changing. As I was grazing through the websites and reading newspapers, I could see the number of people tweeting, or updating statuses all over the SN websites. What more, just see the uproar that our minister had caused a month ago, because of a tweet. Many studies and papers about communication channels suggest that there is a need and a want for these demographic users to stay connected, have 24 * 7 access to the internet-email-chat-social networking websites. Several handset providers are trying to bring in data services as quickly as possible, with Blackberry and iTouch leading the pack. These handsets still need to further develop the technology in order to meet the customer expectations and deliver the desirable user experience. Both the operators and the handset providers see a great opportunity as well as increased interest amongst the young professionals and teenagers. As technology moves forward, several devices are now internet enabled - the better the quality of the product and superior the functionality of the devices, the expensive these get. Clearly there is a need to have all applications such as Facebook, Yahoo, GChat, E-Mail, YouTube, Google Maps, News Channels, Photo Sharing, Social Networking etc. to promote the usage of the devices on a large scale to the young segment at-least. This will make the customers to up their data traffic usage and hold up an excellent customer experience. The market opportunity is definitely clear, however operators and hand set providers need to be innovative both with their product and marketing techniques for a successful launch. I wish I could have typed this with a Blackberry or a smartphone, that would have been a perfect end to this narration. Well I am yet to experience mobile social networking. Its just that my old cell phone is still loyal and doesn't seem to die of its own...