When Vijay Rekhi took charge as the president and managing director of United Spirits Ltd, it was producing a modest 14 million cases. Fifteen years down the line, the company has produced 114 million cases, overtaking global alcoholic beverage makers such as Diageo and Pernod Ricard. A confident Rekhi tells Darlington Jose Hector and Shreya Roy why the company will always remain the leader

You have close to 60% market share in India, and globally you are gunning for the number one spot in volume sales. Where do you see United Spirits heading from here?

Last year we celebrated 100 million cases, this year we will celebrate global leadership. We will close this fiscal at 113.5 million cases, and proclaim ourselves as undisputed leaders in volume sales in the alco-bev market. From there on, the challenge will be to get greater international recognition. We have what we call our ?vision 200?; a vision of doubling our sales volume to 200 million cases by 2015-16. As part of this vision, we will also be aiming to take our revenue from R6,000 crore to R16,000 crore, and triple our EBITDA.

What change do you expect USL to go through in order to achieve this target?

I believe we have to do much more thinking now than we have in the past. We are looking at restructuring the organisation, at various points and in various disciplines, both front and back-end.

When you say restructuring, what are you looking at doing?

One of the things that will be a core focus is building greater self-sufficiency for critical materials. For instance, at one point, for extra-neutral alcohol, we were self-sufficient to the extent of 30%. Because of our racy growth, today we have 11% self-sufficiency. When we get to 200 million cases, it will become 5%. You can?t be having captive self-sufficiency as low as that for a material which can make or break the portfolio or the profitability of a company. We need supply side security, which we will look at building by acquiring distilleries. One is already completed, two more are in the pipeline, three more are in the negotiating stage.

You also mentioned that you will be focusing on international growth. What are the markets you are looking at?

Is there a percentage of volumes that you are aiming to achieve through international sales?

At the moment, 4% of our volume and 20% of value is coming from international sales. We will probably look at improving that to 8% and 30-35%, respectively, in the next four years. Our focus will be on emerging markets, where we will try and plough through with joint ventures, acquisitions and franchisees.

Going forward, how do you see your product portfolio evolving?

In the Indian context, we have products ranging from R250 to an average of R10,000. But there are gaps we are yet to fill. We don?t have a cognac, tequila, liqueurs; we will fill in those missing products. We are working on it.