Ankur Jain is the Founder & CEO of B9 Beverages, and the maker of Bira 91 beers. Born in New Delhi to an architect-urban planner father and an author-interior designer mother, Ankur is a serial entrepreneur who moved to the United States in 1998. He completed his Bachelor’s in computer science from Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago. After a brief stint at Motorola, Ankur co-founded a healthcare revenue management firm in New York City that later sold to a large healthcare provider network in 2007.

More importantly, during his time in New York, his start up was down the street from Brooklyn Brewery in Williamsburg, which is where he spent many-a-Friday-afternoons sampling some of the most ingenious and extreme beers on the planet. He then took a trip to Belgium backpacking to villages and sampling some of the most heavenly beers in local breweries still run by families that had owned them for generations. Inspired by the American entrepreneurship in craft beer and the love of traditional beer in Belgium, he decided that it was time for a craft beer brand “Imagined in India” for the urban, millennial consumer and created Bira 91.

In the last seven years, Bira 91 has established leadership in premium beer in the fast-growing market in India and is the fastest growing beer brand in the world. The company is now present across 18 countries and is in the top 25 craft beer brands worldwide by sales volume.

Ankur is a Fellow of the Disruptor Foundation, New York, and was included in Fortune’s “Top 40 Under 40” in 2016, 2018 & 2019, GQ India’s “50 Most Influential Young Indian Innovators” in 2016 and 2019, Forbes Tycoons of Tomorrow 2018 as well as Economic Times Hottest Business Leaders 2018. He has also been in the Global 100 Young Social Entrepreneur list of Global Knowledge Foundation, Malaysia. He has been invited to speak at various industry forums including the Milken Institute’s Global Conference and the Confederation of Indian Industries (CII) Annual Consumer Summit. Ankur is a fan of hip hop (everything around ’91), loves his food hot and spicy and enjoys cooking for his wife and daughter on the weekends to make up for all the extra beer he drinks!