Sula Vineyards is India’s top wine producer and pioneer of wine production. In addition, Sula has created a top destination for tourism in India with their luxury vineyard properties – The Source and Beyond by Sula, based in Nashik, Maharashtra. Sula is a leader in sustainable grape-growing, winemaking, and viticulture committed to ensuring sustainable growth and development for farmers, communities, and the local environment.
Our early belief in Sula was based on our deep market knowledge of the global wine industry and conviction that a new beverage category could be created for the aspirational Indian consumer. India’s middle class was growing in the 2000s, and Sula introduced many consumers to their first glass of wine. We invested in a nascent but high-potential market, an increasingly discerning set of consumers, and a visionary entrepreneur in Rajeev, who had the global know-how as well as the local smarts to create a new market. After a successful early exit, Saama took the opportunity and leveraged its relationship with the founder to reinvest in Sula from a later fund as a growth investor.