Gen Z is consuming much less alcohol than any technology earlier than it. That is not a hunch. It is information, from the US to the UK to India. And but, liquor shares are on a tear. Radico Khaitan. United Spirits. United Breweries. All quietly minting cash.
So what’s really happening?
The Sober Era
George F Koob of the Nationwide Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism says youthful generations more and more see alcohol as dangerous for his or her well being and usually tend to undergo dry spells. Others level to a quieter social life. Time spent hanging out with buddies in particular person fell from 30 hours a month in 2003 to only 10 hours a month in 2020.
India is not resistant to this both. Surveys of younger adults in Mumbai and Pune discovered well being considerations, psychological well being consciousness, monetary constraints and social media affect had been the primary drivers behind extra cautious, “conscious” consuming habits amongst city Gen Z. Almost half had tried a dry month. Most mentioned they now combine alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks by way of the night time, reasonably than sticking to at least one or the opposite.
Thus far, so simple. Youthful folks, much less booze. Case closed.
Besides it is not.
Why Are Liquor Shares Flying?
Whereas Gen Z are “slicing again”, liquor makers are posting a few of their greatest numbers in years. Radico Khaitan’s quarterly revenue jumped 73 per cent on sturdy demand for premium merchandise like its Rampur whisky, with revenue rising from Rs 1.31 billion. Inside that, its costlier “Status & Above” phase surged 40.8 per cent.
United Spirits informed an analogous story. Web gross sales worth in its premium phase: Johnnie Walker, Tanqueray — rose 9 per cent year-on-year, driving an 8.4 per cent leap in total gross sales.
In actual fact, India’s alcohol market grew sooner than 20 different main international markets, with volumes rising 7 per cent year-on-year to cross 440 million instances within the first half of 2025 — and the premium-and-above phase grew even sooner, at 8 per cent in each quantity and worth.
The Fact: Gen Z Is Consuming Higher
Discuss to the folks really promoting the stuff, and the image will get clearer. Gen Z hasn’t stop. It has traded up.
“Premiumisation continues to be one of many key development drivers for India’s alcobev business,” Anant S Iyer, Director Normal of the Confederation of Indian Alcoholic Beverage Corporations (CIABC), informed NDTV. He factors to Indian single malts, which he says grew “by round 22 per cent in 2025 to just about 5 lakh instances,” with homegrown labels making up roughly 92 per cent of that phase. Gen Z, he provides, is “transferring throughout classes, exploring new flavours, codecs and cocktails and selecting drinks based on the event reasonably than behavior.”
It is the identical story at Radico Khaitan. Sudhir Upadhyay, Chief Gross sales Officer, calls Gen Z “an experimental and financially empowered shopper.” Vodka is the place this exhibits up most. India’s vodka share of the general IMFL business climbed from 4.6 per cent in Q1 FY26 to six.1 per cent in Q1 FY27, he says, with the corporate’s Magic Moments model posting 43 per cent year-on-year development and crossing 1,000,000 instances a month. Greater than 65 per cent of that quantity, Upadhyay notes, now comes from flavoured vodka — not the plain stuff.
Abhishek Modi, Managing Director of Modi Illva India and a CIABC board member, has watched the identical shift play out throughout the business. Vodka, he says, has flipped from “round 60 per cent plain and 40 per cent flavoured” a couple of years in the past to “nearer to twenty per cent plain and 80 per cent flavoured” right this moment. His learn on it: premium now not simply means imported or costly. “Customers are rather more keen to pay for high quality, craftsmanship and merchandise that provide one thing distinctive,” he informed NDTV.
Varun Jain, Founder & CEO of Smoke Lab, sees it in how youthful consumers really store. Gen Z’s “buy journey,” he says, “is more and more formed by digital discovery, social affect and curiosity round a product’s provenance, flavours and total expertise.” His personal model, a Basmati rice-based vodka distilled 5 occasions and flavoured with issues like saffron and inexperienced chilli mango, is betting fully on that curiosity.
Rupi Chinoy, Director at South Seas Distilleries, frames it as a generational reset in what luxurious even means. Gen Z consumers, he says, are drawn to spirits with “a powerful sense of originality and place” — his personal single malt, completed in mahua casks, has picked up gold on the Worldwide Wine & Spirit Competitors partly on the again of that enchantment. “The brand new definition of luxurious in spirits,” he says, “lies not merely in value or status, however in provenance, originality and the richness of the story behind each pour.”
Two Traits, One Client
Put the 2 halves collectively, and the paradox stops being a paradox.
Globally, Gen Z actually is consuming much less — pushed by well being considerations, tighter budgets and a tradition that now not treats a drink as a ceremony of passage. That half is actual, and it is backed by twenty years of survey information.
However in India, a financially empowered slice of that very same technology is doing one thing barely completely different. They are not essentially consuming extra usually. They’re spending extra per drink — buying and selling an inexpensive whisky-soda for a craft cocktail, a well-known model for a single malt with a narrative hooked up. Fewer events, larger cheques. That is premiumisation in a single line.
Liquor firms have merely adopted the cash. Each government quoted above is chasing the identical buyer: somebody who drinks much less out of behavior, and extra on objective – and who’s blissful to pay additional when a model offers them one thing price speaking about.
So subsequent time somebody tells you Gen Z has given up on alcohol, they don’t seem to be unsuitable. They’ve simply omitted the second half of the sentence: they’ve given up on low cost alcohol.
