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The Rise and Fall of Old Monk | Business Case Study
Hello everybody, Old monk is one of the most iconic drinks in the Indian liquor history!! And while most people might think of Old Monk as a nostalgic college drink, what they don’t know is that Old Monk had been such a legend in the market that, once upon a time old monk was the 3rd largest selling rum in the world!! And its taste was so iconic that it was considered to be the drink of gods and legends!! Old monk was so far ahead of its competition that While its competitors were selling 2-3 million cases a year, old monk alone was selling 8 million cases a year!! The best part was that the old monk achieved all of this with a zero marketing Budget!!!But you know what?? Somehow have you noticed, the old monk seems to have suddenly disappeared from the market!! Today Old Monk is nowhere close to being a market leader and from what I last read, the condition of the company was so bad that it was bleeding with 20 crores in losses and was almost on the verge of bankruptcy!!! And I am so surprised to see that a legendary Indian company rose to the top of the world and disappeared and yet no business school has ever covered the case study of rise and fall of monk!! So we decided to pull up our socks to help you get these pearls of wisdom from the rise and fall of old monk!! So in this episode today let’s do a deep dive and try to understand, How did Old Monk become a best seller all across the world with a zero marketing budget? After rising to the top, How did Old monk start bleeding with crores in losses? What are the biggest mistakes that Old monk made which got it close to bankruptyct?? And lastly, as students of business, what lessons can we learn from this remarkable journey?