Empee Group

One of the most prominent conglomerates in South India, Empee Group was founded by the visionary entrepreneur and the group's founder-chairman M. P. Purushothaman in the early 70s. It was his zealous stewardship that transformed the budding business into the all-encompassing business group that it is today. Its businesses include hotels, sugar, power, packaging, transport, construction and exports apart from manufacturing and nurturing some of South India's popular liquor brands.

 

Empee's diversification into liquor happened only in 1984 when its first distillery, running on two semi-automatic lines, was established in Mevaloorkuppam, near Chennai. The first brands introduced into the market were Marcopolo in four categories of whiskey, brandy, rum and gin and Victoria in rum and brandy. These were followed into the markets by Golden Ball brandy and Mc Lene's brandy. Augmentation of this facility with four additional semi-automatic lines led to a surge in the sales of these brands touching 6000 cases per day in 1988. Marcopolo Strong and Lager Beers entered the market following the acquisition of a brewery unit at Kutumbakkam Village from the Tamil Nadu Government in 1993. 1994-95 saw Empee doubling its brewery capacity and entering into bottling tie-ups to enhance the marketing and sales of its products in Kerala. In 1996, the success of its Chennai operations paved the way to establishment of more distilleries, a unit in Palakkad, Kerala the first among them. In the next few years the company entered tie-ups which led to its products reaching further markets in Pondicherry and New Delhi. By the year 2000, its bottling clientele included Shaw Wallace & Co. And Jagjit Indistries. With Karnataka on the cusp of a rapid growth its alcohol market, Empee's foresight led to the group acquiring the distillery unit of the Alembic Group in Whitefield, Bangalaore in 2003. Within a year of its launch in 2003-04, Old Secret Rum, one of the company's best known brands today, sold approximately one million cases in Tamil Nadu. Presently, Empee has a number of popular high quality liquor brands in its portfolio including the likes of Premium Gold Whiskey, Max Beer and its variants, Power vodka and its flavored variants and Napoleon Brandy among others.

 

Early in its growth, Empee Group laid emphasis on not only manufacturing quality products but also building brands that would form relationships with consumers. Therefore Empee has managed to create some signature products with great appeal, especially in its IMFL portfolio which are among the market leaders catering to the premium, mid-level and economy segments.