Delhi Man Went To Uttarakhand To Make Gin With Darjeeling Tea – Today His Indian Spirits Brand Has Served 1Mn+ Customers

India has a lot of diversity – but it isn't just in the cultural, linguistic, and religious sense.

It is also botanical.

The country is home to more than 6,000 species of medicinal plants and countless herbs and spices.

This variety makes India one of the most exciting places for gin-making.

“Back then, we realized that India has tons of potential when it comes to making gins. Literally all classic gin botanicals like cardamom, cinnamon, and even Juniper can be locally sourced. It's the perfect place to bring out craft gins with a story. That's what we did when we started out,” Ansh Khanna, co-founder of Peak Spirits, tells Startup Pedia in an exclusive interview.

Founded in 2018 and based in New Delhi, Peak Spirits is an alcoholic beverage brand that launched the popular Jin Jiji drink, an Indian dry gin that is handcrafted and small-batch distilled with Darjeeling tea and wild foraged Himalayan Juniper.

Over the years, the alcoholic beverage brand has garnered over a million customers across India and abroad.

HOW IT ALL BEGAN

Hailing from Delhi, Ansh did his early schooling at the Sanskriti School, Delhi. For his higher education, he moved to the United States and studied science and accounting at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles.

So how did wine come into his life?

Years ago, when he was just sixteen, Ansh made a couple of trips. One to Tuscany in Italy and one to Uttarakhand in India.

“In Tuscany, I came across beautiful vineyards. One that I saw was being run by the same family for more than three decades. Something akin to an inner calling woke up inside me that day. Even though I didn't know the how, when and why, I made up my mind to somehow enter the alcohol and wine-making industry when I grew up,” Ansh tells Startup Pedia.

Not just that, travelling to Uttarakhand in India exposed him to the country's rich botanical heritage. Lush forests and meadows filled with a variety of shrubs, herbs, and plants — everything pulled him towards nature.

After he finished his undergraduate degree, these travel experiences finally manifested in something concrete – Ansh Khanna decided to undertake a course in Wine Management and Education at UCLA in Los Angeles.

Next, he joined the winemaking team in a winery in California.

“I learned everything about wines here. Not just theoretically but also practically. After that, I moved to Chicago and joined a wine distribution business called Tenzing Wines. This was where I started realizing how much potential India has when it comes to making handcrafted, quality alcoholic beverages,” Ansh explains.

It was at Tenzing Wines that Ansh met Ken Fredrickson, the then CEO of the company.

The two immediately hit it off about their wine-making interests and discussed how homegrown wines and gins were slowly seeing tangible demand. They agreed on the evident market opportunity of creating artisanal alcoholic beverages in India for the world.

That's how Peak Spirits started in 2018.

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JOURNEY AND CHALLENGES

With the vision of making alcoholic beverages in India and selling them to the world, Ansh Khanna and his co-founder, Ken Fredrickson, bootstrapped Peak Spirits with an amount of Rs 1 crore. This came from their savings.

First, the startup founders set up a distillery in Uttarakhand.

“Most of the botanical extracts that we needed were readily available here,”Ansh remarks.

The entrepreneur duo came up with close to forty formulations and started getting consumer tastings on a wide scale. The idea was to make something that resonated with everyone, had a homegrown element to it, and aligned with international tastes as well.

“Ken and I are fairly good tasters ourselves. In fact, Ken is a Master Sommelier. So that wasn't much of a challenge. But doing consumer tastings on a large scale was something that took up time,” startup founder Ansh Khanna tells Startup Pedia.

The first product that came out of Peak Spirits was Kamet, a single malt whiskey. Then came the Jin Jiji drink, an Indian dry gin that is handcrafted to perfection and distilled only in small batches. With extracts of natural Darjeeling tea and wild foraged Himalayan Juniper, it has the perfect homegrown, quality element.

Interestingly, despite being made in India, Ansh and Ken decided to first take Kamet and Jin Jiji to the world. They cracked the supply chain and eased out the regulatory hurdles related to the customs department.

“We took Jin Jiji to New York and started building the brand identity of Peak Spirits as an Indian, homegrown brand. From taking part in multiple events and holding pop-up stalls, we did everything to bring Jin Jiji to the consciousness of the international customer. Things started taking off from here, because once people tasted the quality and richness, organic word-of-mouth recommendations came pouring in,”entrepreneur Ansh Khanna shares.

Peak Spirits also built relationships with restaurants and bars in the United States to place Jin Jiji as the Indian-made, handcrafted, and small-batch distilled dry gin.

Despite the COVID-19 pandemic and its subsequent waves, Peak Spirits sustained with retail sales.

Eventually, in 2023, the alcoholic beverages brand launched Jin Jiji in India.

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PEAK SPIRITS: HANDCRAFTED IN INDIA, MADE FOR THE WORLD

Today, Peak Spirits operates as one of India's leading alcohol and beverage brands that offers handcrafted drinks with the highest-quality ingredients.

Its product offerings include the flagship Jin Jiji in two variants

• Jin Jiji India Dry Gin

• Jin Jiji Darjeeling

According to startup founders Ansh Khanna and Ken Fredrickson, Peak Spirits remains an unwavering product-focused company.

Each ingredient sourced for the beverages is tracked and monitored for quality. Absolutely no industrial colours are used. Every bottle that is sent to the customers is packaged with the highest standards of hygiene and homegrown taste.

“We are also keen on consistently innovating. Peak Spirits is not just another brand that you pick off the shelf. It is quiet, it is handcrafted, and it has a story,” Ansh says.

At the London Spirits Competition in April 2025, Jin Jiji won the award for the Indian Spirit of the Year. Thereafter, it quickly became one of the world's highest-rated gins.

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GROWTH

Since its inception, Peak Spirits has served more than one million customers in India and abroad.

The alcoholic beverages brand believes in "premiumizing" the wine and gin drinking experience of the average customer.

“There's a clear trend of people moving away from lower segment alcohol to premium, better alcohol that stands out and is rich in taste,”Ansh says.

Initially, Peak Spirits started with a team size of three people. Today, across India, the alcoholic beverages brand has 25 full-time employees.

While the founders did not reveal revenue and profit figures, they mentioned to Startup Pedia that close to one million bottles of Peak Spirits beverages have been sold in 2024 alone. This number includes the exports.

“The Indian crafts and spirits industry has a lot of room for people to come in and experiment. The country's drinking experience is changing and becoming more luxurious as we talk. It's no longer about just getting a buzz after a long weekend. It's about savouring flavours, and valuing craftsmanship and the stories behind it,”Ansh Khanna signs off.

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