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India’s craft gin revolution coincided with a generational shift in consumer tastes and expectations. Sector Gin emerged during an inflection point in this ever-evolving movement, positioning itself as a consumer-first label. Distilled in Goa and developed through meticulous trial-and-error, Sector Gin prioritises balance over juniper-forward boldness. Sector’s success story offers insight into how India’s alcohol industry — long shaped by complex bureaucracy and scarcity of choice — is being reshaped by new players willing to innovate slowly.
In the last decade, India has seen a vibrant craft gin renaissance, marked by a surge of small-batch distilleries and boutique labels reimagining the spirit through indigenous botanicals and regional flavours. Drawing on India’s rich spice and herb heritage — think juniper berries complemented by locally-sourced ingredients like kokum, black pepper, raw mango, and Himalayan herbs — distillers have blended global gin traditions with distinctly Indian sensibilities.
This movement has not only expanded the domestic premium spirits market but also earned international attention at tastings and competitions, while kick-starting a new generation of cocktail bars and drinking culture across major Indian cities. Sector Gin, by Bharat Bhagnani’s Living Root Beverages, is a relatively new name in the Indian craft gin scene. Still, its mercurial success story captures how the industry is shifting from revolution to evolution.
On a warm, sun-soaked day in December 2025, I visited Living Root’s distillery in Zuarinagar — an industrial town in South Goa — and experienced first-hand the meticulous care and craft that goes in producing a bottle of this balanced gin that seems to have struck a chord with young, upwardly mobile Indians and tourists alike. During my time in Goa, I saw bottles of Sector on bar counters across Panjim, and I was curious to know what makes this homegrown craft gin so well-liked by such a broad consumer base.
Unlike a lot of Indian craft gins, Sector is not overwhelmingly juniper-forward. During my time in Goa, I tasted all the expressions of Sector Gin — including the heart straight from the distillation stills — and what stood out to me was how well-balanced Sector’s botanicals and fruits are. This is the result of meticulous trial-and-error, Bharat says.
“I hired a distiller from Germany to come and help fine-tune the recipe,” Bharat told me, “but it didn’t work out well even after six trial distillations. He made a very cardamom-forward gin. So I sent him back. Of course, the backbone of the recipe was there by then. We changed a few botanicals and went through six, seven more trials before we launched.”
It was an iterative process, Bharat explained. “Even when we launched the first batch, we weren’t sure that was the final recipe. We actively took feedback from the market, from consumers, and one of the feedback we got was that gins are very drying.”
“We figured out that was because of the dried citrus peel that most gin makers use,” Bharat told me. “So we only use fresh fruits now. We peel our citrus and use the pulp to make a distillate,” he said.
That gamble has clearly paid off. Today, Sector gins are made by master distiller Sourav Nerlekar and a team made of mostly local women who peel and cut lemons, oranges, and grapefruits by hand, distill them separately, and blend them with the botanical base to produce the well-balanced gins which have become Sector’s signature. “We are the only gin-makers in the country doing this,” Bharat says.
This focus on balance has also allowed Sector to escape one of the unspoken traps in India’s craft boom across food, fashion, and drink: the pressure to perform “Indianness”. While Sector is still an Indian gin made with citrus and botanicals from across the country, it’s also remarkably global in its flavour profile.
“Our London Dry Gin can be compared to any London Dry Gin anywhere in the world,” Bharat says. “We can do that because there is no regulation that it has to be made in London. It can be made anywhere in the world. The only regulation is that juniper berries have to be 51% or more of the botanicals by volume.”
The first Sector Gin was a well-rounded London Dry with a palate of eight botanics — juniper berries, cubeb berries, cochin ginger, turmeric, yellow coriander, angelica root, orris root, lemon balm — and three citruses — Bijapur lemon, Valencia orange, and grapefruit. It’s a clean, crisp, and smooth gin with hints of juniper, citrus, and floral notes at the front, a subtle hint of spice, and a refreshingly botanical finish that lingers at the back of your throat.
While the London Dry established Sector’s house style and spirit philosophy, its flavoured gins reveal Bharat’s — and by extension, the label’s — curiosity and intent to play with typical and atypical flavour combinations.
“Six months after we launched the London Dry, we realised a lot of the gin in India is consumed as cocktails,” Bharat says. “Bartenders across India are a talented bunch of people, and what they are doing is that they are making fabulous cocktails (with gins). That led me to explore a portfolio of flavoured gins.”
Sector’s Hibiscus & Peach Gin was the first of its flavoured gins. “We use peach juice and dried hibiscus flowers, which gives it a deep sunset colour,” Bharat explained.
The night before, I was pleasantly surprised by the deceptively floral and fruity top notes of this Hibiscus & Peach Gin when I tried it for the first time. It hits your nose first, and you expect it to be sweet, but the spices and the botanicals take your taste buds by surprise. This particular expression, Bharat noted with satisfaction, “has been extremely successful.”
My favourite, though, was the Raw Mango & Chilli, which was almost akin to a shot of pure nostalgia for my Bengali soul. I grew up in Kolkata, and my memories of the hot and humid Bengal summers are synonymous with aam porra sharbat — a traditional Bengali cooler made with grilled raw mangoes. Bharat, too, has a connection to Kolkata — having studied at the St. Xavier’s College in the city.
“After Hibiscus & Peach, one of my colleagues suggested that we should do something diametrically opposite to that,” Bharat explained. “And we thought, let’s do Raw Mango & Chilli because everybody our age has memories of something spicy like that. So we have something sweet, something spicy, and the third one, Orange & Cacao, came from me because I love eating chocolates.”
The Orange & Cacao is Sector’s latest flavoured gin offering. “I had some chocolate with orange zest in it. It’s such a wonderful combination to work with, and it’s mostly only been used in bakeries till now,” Bharat said. “So I thought, why can’t we make a gin out of this?”
What unites these choices is a refusal to exoticise. “If you see all these products at a Dubai duty-free,” Bharat says, “the first thing in your mind would not be that this is from India.”
But Sector is an Indian gin through and through. Although it may not have tigers and elephants on the bottle, it does proudly say ‘Product of India’ front and centre. The goal here is global legibility, rather than erasure. “We are an Indian gin,” Bharat says. “But beyond that, we want to appeal to global audiences as well. We’re launching in the US right now.”
As we made our way through the Sector distillery, our conversation eventually came to the inevitable question: Who is the craft gin drinker? And who is the Sector drinker?
The rise of craft gin in India coincides with a generational shift in how Indians drink and participate in drinking culture. Younger consumers travel more, taste more, and are less loyal to legacy brands. They care about packaging, ethics, and story — but not at the cost of accessibility. They want products that feel considered without feeling exclusionary.
Sector positions itself squarely here. It is not chasing the connoisseur who wants to recite botanicals, nor the bargain hunter looking to get drunk. Bharat is candid about who Sector is — and is not — for.
“We are not making it for people who just want to get drunk on a night out,” he says. “With all due respect.” Instead, the brand courts a quality-conscious drinker who believes, as Bharat does, that “quality products can be made in India.”
This drinker is someone who doesn’t need instruction. Someone who might sip slowly one evening and mix freely the next. Someone who values consistency over novelty. “You can pick it up and have it whichever way you want,” Bharat says. He recounts customers mixing Sector with masala shikanji or lemonade — uses purists might flinch at, but which the brand celebrates. Versatility, after all, is part of its appeal.
This, arguably, is where India’s gin renaissance has had its most lasting impact. For the first time, the alcohol industry began to treat the consumer as an active participant rather than a passive recipient. Packaging improved. Pricing became more transparent. Feedback loops tightened. In competing with one another, Indian craft gin makers collectively raised the floor for the alcoholic beverages market in India.
Gin, in many ways, cracked open the Indian alco-bev industry. It proved that small producers could exist. That flavour innovation could sell. That consumers would pay for quality without requiring the validation of an international legacy label. In the coming decade, other categories — rum, agave spirits, even whisky — will likely follow the paths gin has cleared.
Sector’s bet is that longevity will matter more than novelty in the long run. That slow processes, transparent communication with consumers, and incremental growth will outlast trend cycles. Like the living root bridges of the North-Eastern Himalayas that inspired Bharat, he hopes for Sector Gin not to be the largest structure in the landscape, but one that people keep coming across, year after year, without quite remembering how and when it first became a part of their life.
Sector Gin is currently available in Goa, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Haryana, and Daman Diu and Silvassa.
Follow @sectorgin on Instagram to learn more.
