Please note that this conference is being recorded. I now hand the conference over to Ms. Runjhun Jain from EY IR. Thank you, and over to you, ma'am.
Thank you, Darwin. We welcome you to Q1 FY25 Earnings Call of Sula Vineyards Limited. To take us through the results and to answer your questions, we have with us the top management from the company, represented by Mr. Rajeev Samant, Chief Executive Officer, Mr. Karan Vasani, Chief Operating Officer, and Mr. Abhishek Kapoor, Chief Financial Officer. We will start with a brief overview from the management, and then we will open the floor for Q&A. Before we begin, please note that numerous factors could cause actual results to differ from those in the forward-looking statement. New factors emerge from time to time, and it's not possible for the management to predict all of them, including the extent to which any combination of the factors may impact the business or cause results to differ materially from those contained in any statement.
Sula Vineyards also undertakes no obligation to update any statements to reflect developments that occur after the statement is made. With that, I hand over to Mr. Rajeev Samant.
Thanks, Runjhun. A very good evening to all of you. Thank you for joining us today for our Q1 FY25 Earnings Conference Call. I hope all of you have had the opportunity to go through our Q1 press release and earnings call presentation that we have put up on the exchanges. Coming now to our performance for the first quarter, I'm pleased to say that we continue to be steadfast on our growth journey, reporting our highest-ever first-quarter sales in Q1 FY25. Our net revenue for the quarter stood at approximately INR 130 crores, which is higher by approximately 10% as compared to the previous year. It's worth highlighting here that this performance has come in despite the significant external challenges we faced during the first quarter, including the national elections, due to which we saw some very heavy restrictions on the movement of AlcoBev.
Further, there were also several dry days across the country during the elections, which has definitely had an impact on our performance. In fact, the intensity of the restrictions this time around was quite unprecedented and unlike anything we've seen in the past, and that definitely impacted sales across categories and across the country. The rules in place put restrictions on the stocks at distributors as well as retailer points, as well as on consumer purchases. This led to retailers destocking during the quarter. Having said that, we do expect this one-time event to be now firmly behind us, and we expect to see this reverse in the coming months. Secondly, the scorching heatwave that we saw in our key markets has also had an adverse impact on us, on wine demand, as well as on wine tourism.
But moving on, there are a couple of really encouraging positive trends in the quarter that I would like to touch upon. First is that the joys of wine are really spreading across India beyond just the metros and large cities. So smaller markets like Nashik, Daman, Telangana, MP, UP, Haryana, Odisha, among others, have performed very strongly for us in Q1, recording very high growth. CSD also continues to see very robust growth and grew 50% in Q1. Now, this bodes really well for our future growth and our ambitions of establishing a strong Pan-India footprint and taking wine really nationwide. Second is The Source collection, which has been a real standout in our Elite and Premium portfolio.
It has been one of the most successful premium wine brand launches of the last decade, if not the most successful, and continues to be a very strong performer for us, recording a 20%+ growth in Q1. Moving on, I would like to briefly touch on an important strategic change that we have made to our sales and distribution model in our route to market in our key state, number one sales state of Maharashtra. Given the very wide portfolio of wines that we have with 68 labels currently, and to bring an enhanced focus in both our categories, that is the elite and premium, as well as the economy and popular, we have decided to shift to a third-party sales model for our economy and popular brands in Maharashtra. This strategy enables our own internal sales team to focus much sharper on the elite and premium categories.
Moreover, I'm pleased to say that this initiative of moving to a third-party sales model for our cheaper brands in Maharashtra has shown promising early results. We've seen healthy growth in the Economy and Popular category in Q1. In fact, we had already earlier adopted this approach in Karnataka and Telangana, and it had yielded good results there as well. So we are confident of this approach working well in Maharashtra as well. Coming now to a quick update on our wine tourism business, Q1 was soft primarily because of heatwave, deterioration of road infrastructure in the last few months, and also due to the national elections. There was definitely an impact even on that. Especially the Mumbai-Nashik route has faced infrastructure issues over the last few months, and these, unfortunately, still continue.
While the footfalls have continued to remain soft, there's a silver lining as we are seeing resort occupancies going up nicely in July and August compared to Q1. Further, we hope that with the completion of the last stretch of the Samruddhi Mahamarg and with the repair work that's going on in full swing, travel conditions should improve soon. So we are optimistic about seeing a pickup before and during the upcoming festive period. This has impacted us because you would be aware that we sell almost exclusively our Elite and Premium wines in our wine tourism business. And so when we have an impact on wine tourism, it has a disproportionate impact on our Elite and Premium wines. If you talk about our Elite wines, it has a much higher proportion of sale D2C at our wine tourism than any other category.
Moving on, as I've highlighted in the past, our wine tourism business acts as a springboard for us in attracting new customers and introducing many Indians to wine for the first time. So this is a very good platform for us to attract long-term Sula patrons. Hence, we are always on the lookout to expand this business to newer locations. So in the previous quarter, we launched Milestone Cellars by Sula near the Nashik Airport. This is our first tasting room and wine-themed restaurant outside the Sula campus. And in the immediate future as well, we have a couple of really exciting projects lined up to open in Q2. First is the tasting room and wine-themed restaurant planned at the newly acquired ND Wines in Nashik. And second is the expansion of our wine tourism facilities at our Domaine Sula campus near Bangalore.
Both these projects are progressing well, and our target is to open these before the festive period begins. So we expect these expansions to add further impetus to our H2 performance, especially in the wine tourism sphere. A little bit further out, we also have our new resort coming up next year next to our York Winery in Nashik. This is going to expand our room capacity by 30% as well as add all-important conference facilities, which we are right now lacking in our existing resorts. We will continue to look at expansion opportunities as well as strategic M&A opportunities to scale this business faster because we see it as a very key part of our continued long-term growth.
Finally, moving on to the outlook with the transitory headwinds now hopefully behind us, the expansion plans in wine tourism coming on stream in H2, we're confident of ending the year on a stronger footing. With that, I would now like to call on our CFO, Abhishek Kapoor, to take you through our financial performance and metrics in greater detail. Over to you, Abhishek.
Thank you, Rajeev. Good evening, everyone. Following Rajeev's overview of our business performance and key initiatives, I will now focus on our financial highlights for Q1 of fiscal 2025. To start, our operating revenue for Q1 showed a 10% YOY increase with 12.7% growth coming from our own brands. This includes unwinding of fair value of WIPS incentive amounting to INR 10 crore. Unwinding of WIPS is an operating income as the original recognition was fair valued due to expected realizations extending beyond 12 months. The change in fair value assumption, as also confirmed by our auditors, is due to realization of past dues till FY2023, leaving a balance of less than 12 months' old outstanding. Hence, it is classified as an operating income. Our Elite and Premium portfolio grew by 8.6% and Economy and Popular by 24%.
It is for the first time in at least 8 quarters that our Economy and Popular portfolio has grown ahead of Elite and Premium. Contribution from Elite and Premium touched 75% of our portfolio at its peak in FY24, and it's taken a pause during Q1. Having said that, our focus on premiumization shall continue. With separation of route to market for Maharashtra, which Rajeev mentioned in his speech, we see fair growth for both our Elite and Premium and Economy and Popular portfolios going forward. Our wine tourism business declined marginally by 2% compared to the same period last year. The reasons have already been mentioned by Rajeev. As Rajeev mentioned, Q1 was soft primarily because of the scorching heatwave and deterioration in infrastructure at present.
Having said that, with the weather conditions improving and the conditions of roads also expected to improve, we are optimistic of seeing an uptick in footfall in the period ahead. Turning to the financial metrics now, our gross margin stood at 76%, which is 250 points better versus last year. Increase in employee cost by 10.5% includes a 6% increase on account of ESOP cost, which was granted in quarter four of FY24. Our expenses increased by around 18% primarily due to two factors. Selling and distribution cost increase reflects the market mix change, with markets outside of our core markets of Maharashtra and Karnataka growing ahead of other markets growing ahead of these two markets. We saw a 500 basis point increase in contribution from other markets.
This is in line with our strategy of investing in building the brand and distribution strength outside of our core markets of Maharashtra and Karnataka. Secondly, operationalization of bottling operations at ND Wines also contributed to an increase in OpEx. Our bottling operations commenced in July 2024. Our quarter one EBITDA increased by 10% to INR 35 crore, up from 34 to 32 crore in the same period last year. EBITDA margin held at 27%. Interest cost increased due to a one-time custodian fee on change of mortgage charge, and there also a higher utilization of working capital limits in quarter one. Our Q1 is heavy on working capital on account of payment towards the grape procurement with higher weightage of cash inflows in quarter three and quarter four. Having said that, our debt EBITDA stood at 1.6 times, continuing to be well below our own benchmark of 2.
Our outstanding WIPS balance as of 31st March 2024 was INR 73 crore, with INR 21 crore accrued during quarter one of FY25, taking the total WIPS balance to INR 94 crore as of June end. We would like to remind here that at its peak, the WIPS outstanding was INR 160 crore, and then we received INR 89 crore from Maharashtra government on 31st of March. We further received INR 10 crore in July 2024, reducing the WIPS outstanding balance to INR 84 crore. We remain positive to realize the balanced amount in FY25. Our profit after tax for the quarter totaled INR 14.5 crore, reflecting a 7% increase over previous year. I would now request our COO, Mr. Karan Vasani, to give you more insights into the operating initiatives. Over to you, Karan.
Thank you, Abhishek, and thank you, Rajeev. Good evening, everyone. I will be taking you through some key operational updates. First off, happy to report that the monsoon is on track, and we are expecting a healthy 2025 grape harvest, which we expect to meet our requirements and ensure that we have adequate supply of all our wines in the next financial year. We expect this to be our fifth consecutive harvest of good quality and quantity. The quality of our wines continues to be best in class, and we continue to gain further international recognition for our wines. Most recently, we won a whole host of medals at both the Decanter World Wine Awards and the Asian Sparkling Wine Masters, confirming our quality.
Our plan, moving on, our plan to have multiple bottling units in Maharashtra is on track, and I am pleased to report that as of today, we are bottling and dispatching wines from three units in Maharashtra. Dispatches from York Winery, which is our subsidiary Artisan Spirits, began in the middle of May. At the newly acquired ND Wines, we have put in place bottling infrastructure on a war footing, and dispatches have commenced in late July. Dispatches from both these units have commenced as per our planned timelines, and we are on track to maximize the WIPS subsidy available to us. Our key CapEx project for the year, that is phase one of our low-cost celler for our cheaper wines at the DD unit, is on track and will be delivered well in time for the 2025 grape harvest.
This low-cost cellar is being built at a much lower capital cost of INR 80 per liter, as against our earlier premium cellars that were built at INR 120 per liter. The total capacity of the low-cost cellar is 2.5 million liters, and of that, 1.5 million liters will be delivered in the first phase, which will be ready by about January 2025. That includes our operational updates, and I would now like to hand the call back over to the moderator to open up for Q&A. Thank you.
Thank you very much. We will now begin the question and answer session. Anyone who wishes to ask a question may press star and one on their touch-tone telephone. If you wish to withdraw yourself from the question queue, you may press star and two. Participants are requested to please use handsets while asking a question. Ladies and gentlemen, we will now wait for a moment while the question queue assembles. The first question comes from the line of Percy from IIFL. Please go ahead.
Hi. I just had a question on the WIPS. So including the INR 10 crore of the adjustment booked this quarter and the normal income also booked this quarter, how do we see the overall WIPS for this year, not in cash flow terms but in terms of P&L booking?
Thanks for your question, Percy. This is Abhishek. I'll answer your question. In terms of the WIPS, we had shared earlier as well that there will be a slightly lower accrual during the year given that the capping, which has been introduced effective this current financial year, we said that it will be closer to 80% of the overall realizable value what we can achieve. But with this INR 10 crore, it is expected to be almost at the same level as last year.
Sorry, how much was that? If you can just jog my memory.
Last year, we accrued INR 48 crore WIPS in financial year 2024.
Okay. It will be similar this year?
Yes, it is. It is expected to be similar.
Okay. Going ahead, should we be taking a normal 10%-15% growth on this number, or how does it work?
So there, one thing to remember, Percy, the current year, one thing to add is that this year, of the eligible WIPS, we are only about to capture 80%-85% given that bottling has begun in mid-May at ASPL and in July at ND. So from next financial year, we'll be bottling throughout the year. So next year, we expect instead of around 80%-85%, to capture closer to 95%. So there will be a bit of a jump next year, following which it will stabilize and grow at the pace of Maharashtra sales.
Okay. Got it. Second question is, how do I look at your EBITDA for this quarter? So your reported EBITDA, excluding other financial income, is about INR 34 crores. Now, if this would include the INR 10 crores of the WIPS adjustment, which is not pertaining to this quarter but an adjustment over the last few quarters, so a one-off in that sense. So if I remove that, the EBITDA will be INR 24 crores, which in margin terms would be about 21%-22% approximately, which is significantly lower than what we have done in any of the quarters in the past. So is this understanding correct, first of all? And secondly, if that is the case, what is the reason for these low margins?
Yeah, Percy. So yes, you are right in terms of the interpretation of the numbers. So it really closed to around INR 24 crore backing off the INR 10 crore one-time WIPS unwinding impact. So this EBITDA being lower versus last year is largely on account of change in the mix. So our Elite and Premium portfolio always used to be higher as we have been focusing on our premiumization. This year, we have seen 270 basis points for the quarter. There is a skid in our Elite and Premium share in terms of the revenue share. So largely due to that reason and also slightly higher S&E, which we can see in the S&E line item which I spoke about, largely these two factors contributed to the EBITDA being lower.
In addition to that, also, our hospitality, as Rajeev mentioned earlier, where our Elite wines are having the biggest share in terms of the bottles which we sell from there. So these factors have contributed to the EBITDA being lower versus Q1 of last year.
Understood. And last question from my side, this third-party model, exactly how does this work? Is there one person whom you sell the entire wine to in Maharashtra, and then he in turn appoints distributors and gets it done? Or do you have multiple third parties whom you deal with? Some more color on this would help.
So I'll take this one. We are going to be dealing with one third party, sort of acting like a super distributor, who will then appoint his own distributors. This is a party well known to us who knows the market extremely well. This is not a traditional model in Maharashtra. It's a very traditional model in cooperative states, Karnataka/Telangana, where you call it the promoter model. So we are sort of using that promoter model and using it in Maharashtra, and the initial results have been excellent. Basically, we expand our distribution at the same point. So whereas earlier, we were dealing with one distributor for all our wines, now that party is appointing their own distributors. In some cases, they coincide, but what's happening is our distribution is also expanding, and each distributor in the market always brings their unique strengths and relationships.
That is already starting to pay off very handsomely in the first 2.5 months 3 months, actually, since we have launched this strategy. It's also part of the reason why the popular economy has outperformed in Q1.
Right. Right. Got it. That's all from me. Thanks, and all the best.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Madhur Rathi from Counter Cyclical Investments. Please go ahead.
Hi. Thank you for the opportunity, sir. Sir, I wanted to.
Sorry to interrupt, but the line for you is very low in volume and sounding slightly muffled.
Sure. Is it better right now?
Slightly better, sir. Please go ahead.
Yes. Sir, I wanted to understand that excluding the WIPS benefits that we get, sir, there has been no value growth or else value so very little value growth and volume degrowth for this quarter, even on such a small WIPS. So why is that? Because as you understood, that segment was growing. So being an industry leader, so it's not getting reflected in our numbers. So if you could just explain regarding that.
Sure. I'll take this. The Q1 has been a perfect storm in a lot of ways. So this is not about us losing market share. The entire wine industry has. It's been a very slow quarter. Because of the fact that you have the national elections, I can't overemphasize how big an issue this was. Unprecedented, and we feel slightly overbearing restrictions and rules, which given the fact that it's a smaller quarter in terms of sales, it has a disproportionate impact. That is one thing. Another thing which I didn't allude to earlier was that there was a very specific incident that happened a few months back in Pune. You can refer to it as the Pune Porsche incident. Now, you all will be aware that a large part of our sales and especially our Elite and Premium sales happen in Maharashtra.
What has happened as a result of that incident was a large number of bars and restaurants were closed literally overnight, not just in Pune but also in Mumbai. And these are our two most important markets, and that has hit us. We are hoping that those will be. They're already starting to reopen. Again, the response was whether that was the right response or not by the state authorities. It has really hurt the F&B business, and it has hurt us as well. So we are looking forward to that reopening. That is another factor. And wine tourism, we did take a hit in Q1 after many quarters of unbridled growth. Finally, in Q1, it softened. And we lay that at the doorstep of not just the elections and even those people who came to our campus where you have people normally who will load up their car dickies.
People were very worried about the checking, etc. And so everyone was limiting themselves to no more than sort of two bottles a person. You had a big impact of that. You definitely had an impact of the heatwave, Nashik's, or some very hot conditions. Of course, that is something that we are unfortunately going to have to deal with every year moving forward. So we had a perfect storm of a number of these conditions in Q1, which we certainly hope will now start to be behind us. And we are already starting to see that uptick from July onwards. Thank you.
Thank you for that new change. Sir, my next question would be, sir, what percentage of our revenue would come from HoReCa segment and the pure play general trade segment? Hello?
Yeah. So basically, our on-trade, the HoReCa, which we call as our on-trade, that contributes to around 30%, and 70% comes from our off-trade.
Okay. So the off-trade would be distribution and general trade, right?
Yes. That's right.
Okay. Sir, just a final question. Sir, what would be the outlook for FY25 in terms of our revenue as well as margins? A broad guidance would work.
Okay, Madhur. So while we don't give any outlook guidance, Percy, we continue to remain positive about the balance of the year as Rajeev has already spoken about the storm of multiple adverse events is now behind us. So we are hoping for a positive recovery in the balance of the year.
Can we expect a double-digit kind of volume growth? On the volume front, I think you will have a better idea. Can we expect a double-digit volume growth for the whole year?
As I said, Madhur definitely can't give any guidance in terms of the specific numbers. I think the indication which we have already given is in terms of a better recovery from what we have seen in quarter one.
Sure, sir. Thank you so much and all the best.
Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Himanshu Shah from Dolat Capital. Please go ahead.
Hello?
Sir, you are audible. You may proceed, sir.
Yeah. Thank you. Sir, just wanted your comment. One of our competitors, Pernod Ricard, has sold off their wine business in a couple of countries, including India. How do you see this movement? Should this benefit us positively, negatively? We believe, presumably, Pernod Ricard must have been pushing their wine business along with their mother brands and the core whisky business. So can the competition get softened or something for us?
Yes. This is a great question. I would say that if this sale goes through, as we have seen in the media, they're expecting it to close sometime in late 2025. This is excellent news for us. I can't even overstate how good news this is. However, having said that, I would be cautiously optimistic because these kinds of things, you can't depend on them. A deal has been announced, but many are slipped between the cup and the lip, no pun intended. So Pernod, Jacob's Creek is basically number two to the best of our knowledge in terms of sales in India after Sula. So obviously, extremely important competitor. And the fact is, as you have mentioned, that they have been riding on the success of their whiskies. I mean, Pernod Ricard, India is a giant behemoth with massive muscle in the Indian market.
And basically, there have been all sorts of incentives to pick up the wine at what works out to a heavily incentivized rate along with the whisky. So, hey, you want the whisky, you need to pick up the wine as well. And that is something that has been extremely, it is extremely difficult to compete with that kind of muscle. So with Jacob's Creek moving on, hopefully, we are very hopeful that this deal gets completed, but we are not going to depend on it. To a pure wine company, which is likely to be the case, Accolade in this case, they lose their entire clout in India.
For Accolade, the U.K. is a far more important market, and they're also bulking up to go back into China, which dropped out of sort of the Australian radar for a couple of years with the massive tariffs which have been taken off. India is just not on Accolade's radar. Now, having said that, maybe they could work something out. Maybe they could do a co-distribution with Pernod. That's all possible. But prima facie, excellent news for us, I would say, mid to long-term with caution.
Sure, sir. Thanks a lot for the detailed answer. Very helpful. That's it from my side, and all the best for us. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Giriraj Daga from Visaria Family Trust. Please go ahead.
Hello. Yeah. Am I audible?
Sir, you are audible. You may proceed.
Yeah.
Thank you.
Yeah. Actually, I'm new to the company. My first, I need some clarification on the debt, sir. So you mentioned you have accounted for INR 10 crore in the quarter one. Was there a subsequent corresponding number for the quarter one last year? Or if no, where did you account this INR 48 crore last year in which quarter?
So, okay, I'll take this question, Giriraj. So WIPS, as we stated, that we had been fair valuing the WIPS. So the accrual, which happened as we did our primary sales from the company, along with that, basis the two years of discounting, we were fair valuing it in our books. Now, this unwinding has happened with respect to the whole clarity coming onto the scheme, the continuity of the scheme, and also getting the regular payments from the government. So that's where basically this stands from a competitive standpoint. And as I answered earlier to another question, in terms of what is our expected WIPS for the year, we are expecting it to be at the similar level as we accrued the WIPS amount in the last financial year. Hope this answers.
No, no. No, no, sir. I'm still missing the place. So last year, I can see in the balance sheet, we had given INR 47.06 crore, government grant accrued during the year. I am particularly looking which line item we have accounted this and in which quarter.
It was there in each of the quarters. All the quarters, depending on the sale done during the quarter, the amount was accrued into the operating income. When you look at the revenue line item, the operating revenue, WIPS is a part of that.
What was the corresponding number last quarter, quarter one?
Last year, the number was close to around INR 10 crore.
So actually, I got a bit confused when other people are making comparison that there's no growth excluding the WIPS. But the number is same, right? So we still grew 10%, right?
Yeah. This is unwinding. So we have specifically called out the one-time unwinding amount is INR 10 crore. So in addition to the base amount of INR 10 crore, there is an additional INR 10 crore on account of unwinding.
Understood. Understood. My second question is, if you would just need some clarification, you can just briefly mention that when I was looking at past financial during 2018, 2019, 2020, we used to have a high material cost. But over the last three years, that number has come down. So that is one aspect what happened there. And second, when I look at number from 2019 to 2024, standard number, we're barely grown by 10%. So if you can just highlight these two points.
So, Giriraj, if you are comparing with the previous years, which is spanning from last three to four years, so there is a major change in terms of our portfolio, which has happened. We have been talking about premiumization. So led by this premiumization, of course, the growth has been higher. We spoke about that at its peak in FY24, we had reached our Elite and Premium to 75%. So that's basically the reason in terms of where you see the gross margin and where you're talking about the cost of material has been gross margin has been increasing. And correspondingly, you have seen the cost of goods reducing over these years.
Okay. Growth part, we have not grown for the last five years comparison 2019 to 2024?
I think there, just to jump in, you need to take a look, and we can send this data to you, is the mix change. There was a relatively large third-party brands that we used to do, which was importing and distribution of wines and spirits from across the globe. And that business has reduced substantially. In fact, I would say it's fallen by 70%+. And we have refocused on our own brands, which are far more profitable. So if you were to look at just the own brand side of things, you would see the growth.
Understood. Thanks a lot. Thanks a lot, sir. That's all from my side.
Sure.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Prakash Modi from KCT Financial and Management Services. Please go ahead.
Thank you. Am I audible?
Yes, please.
Yeah. So I have a couple of questions. One was that I have seen over the period, there is some selling from the promoter side. So any specific reason for that? If you see last one year, there is a reduction in the stake by almost 1.5%.
See, Jed, I'll say something here. Usually, I wouldn't comment on this, but I do get this question a lot. So let me make something very clear. In fact, if you take a look at what was my holding a couple of years ago and what is my holding today, perhaps my holding has reduced from, say, 27%-25%. So if you think about it in that terms, this is not a big reduction. I hardly sold anything at OFS. And I'm going to give you a little personal story here that I had to basically sell my house, my residence, in order to finance my conversion of my warrants and ESOPs into shares at that time. And so for the last two and a half years, my friends, I have not owned a residence.
So finally, I decided that I think for a person in my position, I should own a residence now that I am married and have a kid. So I decided to buy a residence. And those don't come for free. And so I did need a little bit of liquidity for that. And I hope that that should be the end of the questions and the story. I continue to be by far the largest shareholder. And I hope all of you will appreciate the reason why I had to take a small amount of liquidity. Thank you.
Yeah. Congratulations on your new house, sir. We hope for the best. Just my second question was, in the last phone call, you highlighted something of acquisition outside wine business. So any updates over there?
No update on that. We have been taking a look, but I must say that nothing has come up that looks too exciting. In fact, at this point, we are examining more closely one or two opportunities again within the wine business in India, which look more interesting than anything that we are looking at outside the wine business. So I did mention that we are open to it. But I would state explicitly at this point that there is nothing on the anvil. Nothing has come up that is very interesting. We also received, I must say, a lot of feedback and a lot of warnings from a lot of quarters saying, "Please stay away from spirits. Stay away from beer.
Please continue to focus on wine." In fact, I don't think we got a single positive comment or to this comment of mine that we were starting to look a little bit outside as well. So we also do take some of these things on board. At this point, nothing to report on that front.
Okay. Just one last question to Mr. Kapoor: on the revenue side, there is one item related to other income, revenue from other sources. Can you just highlight that exactly? Prakash, this is largely interest income. We also have whatever surplus which we accrue; we also park it into banks and FDs. There is an interest accrual on that. It's largely on account of that. Okay. Okay. Thank you. That's it from my side.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Janita Sanghavi from Stock Lounge. Please go ahead.
Hi. I wanted to know the conversion rate from wine tourism. How many customers are you retaining from that section?
That is a bit vague. Sorry. Retaining, do you mean how many people who come to our campus actually buy something?
Yes.
If that's your question, so it's a very high proportion. You should note that we charge an entry fee because years ago, we noticed that people were just coming and having sort of picnic in our vineyards and all that and not really paying anything. So we now charge INR 1,000 on the weekend per person to enter and INR 600 on a weekday per person. People come and pay happily, and then that entire amount is redeemable against purchases against wine or food. So everyone has to, of course, buy at least that. But in general, we find most people are buying even more than that. So I would say that there's almost not a single person who enters our vineyards who doesn't buy something or the other.
Once you start talking about our higher-level sort of visitors who are staying at The Source, etc., paying upwards of INR 10,000 a night, then the purchase really goes up. Almost everyone buys wine to take away.
Okay. I do have one more question as well. What is the current capacity utilization, sir?
So I will take this one. As of the previously concluded harvest, Harvest 2024, we scored it about 85%-86% capacity utilization, which is pretty close to our maximum, which we judge at around 87%-88%.
Okay. Okay, sir. All right. So you're looking at this maximum utilization. So this is the first year or has it been the previous years as well, sir?
We are always in the process of incrementally adding capacity. As I alluded to in my opening remarks, we are this year also adding a little bit more capacity. We're adding 1.5 million liters of capacity, which represents about a 9% increase in our capacity, which will put us in a good spot for the upcoming 2025 grape harvest.
Okay. Thank you.
I'm going to add one comment here. I'm not sure if we touched on it earlier, that we did a lot of work on figuring out how to build a low-cost seller for our cheaper wines. Earlier, our cost per liter, taking into consideration civil construction as well as the storage tanks as well as cooling infrastructure, etc., was coming to INR 120 a liter. And I'm very pleased to say our team, led by Karan, have done some great work on this. And the new capacity that we are putting in is more like INR 80 a liter, so significantly less, which is definitely going to have a great positive impact on our OC going forward and will allow us to put more money into competing in the market.
Okay, sir. Thank you.
Thank you. The next question is from the line of Arshay Desai from Archer Capital. Please go ahead.
Thank you for the opportunity. Am I audible?
Yes, you're audible, sir.
Thank you. Thank you. So as mentioned in the opening remarks, sir, this quarter growth was impacted due to the heat wave and elections . However, the growth in Economy and Popular has grown strongly, in fact, outpacing Elite and Premium. So what is the reason for the same? Going forward, due to the strain of the Economy and Popular to outgrow, Elite and Premium to continue?
Yeah. I had alluded to a big change that we have made in our distribution in Maharashtra, number one market, where we did feel that our focus was getting diluted over the last year as we've been adding more and more wines, especially in the elite segment. As I mentioned earlier, today, we have 68 wine brands. That is about something like 50 of our own brands and about 15, 18 imported brands. So it's a huge portfolio when you're talking about just wine. So just doing this sharpening of focus, hiving off this portfolio to a third party has already started to pay very strong results. And the results are coming first in sort of the popular and economy category. However, having said that, no, there's nothing that says that moving forward, that is going to continue to be.
We expect to get back to something closer to where we were earlier. Having said that, we reached a high point of 75% of our sales of our revenues and own brands coming from Elite and Premium. That was something where we never expected to reach. So getting to more than 75% is not going to be that easy. So I would just leave it at that.
Thank you. Thank you. That's from my end, sir.
Thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, we will take that as our last question for today. I would now like to hand the conference over to Mr. Rajeev Samant for closing comment. Over to you, sir.
Yes. So just like to thank all of you for being on board this evening. Just to recap a few things, Q1 was challenging. However, we already see conditions starting to improve. National elections, obviously, were a big challenge for us. Heat wave, more recently, of course, we've had the problems with the Nashik highway. Having said that, a lot of good things also on the horizon. Just started direct flights from Delhi to Nashik recently. That's, again, a good thing to look forward to. So Nashik and Shirdi flight connectivity getting better and better all the time. In fact, I am slated to take my first flight from Hyderabad into Nashik in just a couple of days. So a lot of good reasons to be very positive and optimistic about the months and years ahead. I want to remind that this is a long-term game.
It doesn't lend itself so well to quarterly earnings, but nonetheless, we are positive about the way ahead.
Thank you. On behalf of Sula Vineyards Limited, that concludes this conference. Thank you all for joining us. You may now disconnect your lines.