It was during a daily tussle with his three business partners over a flask of home-made aam panna — a traditional Indian drink concocted from raw green mangos — that Neeraj Kakkar had an inspiration that led to the creation of Paper Boat drinks.
A former Coca-Cola India manager, Mr Kakkar had set up his own drinks company two years earlier in 2010. But Hector Beverages was drifting. Its energy drink, Tzinga, was selling only moderately. Launching a western-inspired “vitamin water” seemed the next logical move. Until James Nuttall, Mr Kakkar’s American partner, asked where to buy aam panna — the distinctive sweet-and-sour mango cooler, made by the mother of one of the partners — for his own visiting parents.
“We were flummoxed,” Mr Kakkar says. “We thought about it for some time and realised there is no aam panna available in this country. Talk of blind spots. You have been living here, working in the beverage industry, and the aam panna, which you like and which you fight over every day — nobody is making it, and it is available nowhere.”
That was the origin of Paper Boat — Hector Beverages’ brand of traditional Indian drinks, which have been lapped up by affluent, urban Indian consumers since their launch in August 2013. Sold in sleek, single-serving flexible packaging — squashy bottles — Paper Boat drinks are available in 10 varieties — from the aam paana and jal jeera (cumin water) of north India, to the kokum, or wild mangosteen juice, popular in the southwestern coastal region.