Chandramohan Nallur has never tasted his own beer. The Kerala-born entrepreneur and lifelong teetotaler runs Hexagon Spirits International from Warsaw, Poland, where his flagship Malayali Beer has muscled its way onto shelves, taps, and duty-free counters across Europe, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, and Oceania. What started with a stranded shipment of Indian rice flakes during the Russia-Ukraine war has ballooned into a brand that scooped Gold and Bronze at the 2025 World Beer Awards, surpassed one million cans sold, and now eyes North America, Africa, and China.
A Shipment That Refused To Die
Four days before a cargo of rice flakes from Varanasi reached the port in Hamburg, the Russia-Ukraine conflict erupted. Currency chaos followed. The flakes became unsellable overnight, and Nallur, then a Business Relationship Director at the Indo-Polish Chamber of Commerce and Industry, stared at a mounting loss with no obvious exit.
He and co-founder Sargheve Sukumaran, a design strategist and startup mentor who had been working with Samsung, scrambled through options. Pet food was considered and abandoned. Then they stumbled across accounts of Indian-grain brewing experiments abroad and saw a spark of possibility in the spoiled cargo. Within weeks, the pair connected with European brewers and began fermenting trial batches using those very rice flakes. The grain, blended with Czech hops and traditional European malt, yielded a lager that was unexpectedly crisp yet feather-light on the palate.
“We were just trying to turn a bad situation into something less bad,” Nallur recalls. That reluctant experiment produced a hybrid recipe now recognized on the world stage. Malayali Lager won Gold in the Lager category at the 2025 World Beer Awards in Norwich, England, while its non-alcoholic sibling, Malayali Habibi, earned Bronze in the Czech Style category. The judges evaluated more than 3,000 entries from established breweries across the globe, making the debut victory all the more striking.
The brand name itself carries emotional weight. During Operation Ganga, India’s evacuation mission to rescue citizens stranded in Ukraine, Nallur and Sukumaran noticed that a large share of the volunteers hailed from Kerala. The observation ignited an idea. They filed a trademark and printed the word “Malayali” on every can, turning a regional identity into a global badge that resonated far beyond the Indian diaspora.
The Sober Architect Behind The Empire
Most beer founders carry stories of barroom revelations or childhood memories of hops drying in a barn. Nallur carries spreadsheets. He treats the alcohol business the way an engineer treats a structural problem, studying what happens to the body after the last sip rather than romanticizing the first.
That clinical distance turned into a competitive edge. While rival brewers refined recipes by palate alone, Nallur fixated on a complaint millions of beer drinkers share but rarely articulate out loud. Heavy lagers pair poorly with rich, spicy food. They leave drinkers sluggish and bloated. Malayali’s hybrid formula, lighter because of the rice flakes yet structurally sound thanks to Czech brewing discipline, was engineered to eliminate what the company calls the “zero burp” effect when consumed alongside a meal. The phrase sounds playful, but the science behind the grain ratio is deliberate and precise.
“Maybe the distance helps,” Nallur says of his sobriety. “Instead of chasing the next buzz, I am thinking about how people actually feel after their beer, especially with food.”
The product line radiates outward from that philosophy. Malayali Lager targets European palates with its clean, smooth profile. Malayali Power, a stronger variant at 7.2% ABV, caters to Middle Eastern and Southeast Asian markets where bolder brews dominate. Malayali Habibi fills a growing gap among consumers who want the social ritual of beer without the alcohol, making it the sole Indian non-alcoholic malt beverage available across Europe. Each variant springs from the same question Nallur kept asking during those early trials. What would make a drinker feel good enough to order another round without regretting it the next morning?
Pouring Across Borders At Breakneck Speed
Three years from brand inception, Malayali Beer is available in 25 countries and occupies duty-free shelves at three major international airports, including Cochin International in Kerala, Muscat Duty Free in Oman, and a UAE airport outlet. Revenue reached 1.3 million euros with roughly 600 percent growth, and the company operates through nine production facilities scattered across Europe.
Sukumaran, who orchestrates the brand’s visual identity, views the label as more than marketing. The Kathakali-inspired headgear and the spirit of Malayalam cinema culture printed on each can tell a story long before anyone cracks the tab. Fans in Poland, the UK, and the Gulf embraced a name they had never encountered on a beer label before. He has said the goal is to prove that a beer carrying an Indian identity can stand beside any global name on quality alone.
The speed of expansion has been staggering, even by startup standards. Within two months of its initial launch in Poland, the brand sold over 50,000 bottles. Little India Group stepped in as a distributor, and European restaurant owners began requesting Malayali on tap after hearing word-of-mouth praise about its smoothness. Sales grew roughly 30 percent year over year from there, and the company eventually crossed the million-can milestone in under three years.
Looking ahead, Hexagon Spirits is charting distribution agreements aimed at the North American market, with Africa and China on the roadmap. A new vodka label called Yakshi hovers on the horizon, signaling that the company’s ambitions stretch well beyond beer. The founders have stated a long-range target of reaching 100 countries within a decade. Whether Nallur ever raises a glass of his own creation remains unlikely, but his dry-eyed clarity about the business has fermented something the industry rarely sees. A brand built by someone who respects the ritual of drinking precisely because he has never participated in it.