Mohan Meakin Limited

In the late 1840s, Edward Dyer moved back to India from England to set up a brewery in India (later incorporated as Dyer Breweries in 1855) at Kasauli in the Himalayas. The Kasauli brewery launched India's and indeed Asia's first beer, Lion, which was in great demand by the British administrators and troops stationed in the heat of India. Lion was much appreciated as a beer, and one famous poster featured a satisfied British Tommy declaring, "as good as back home!"

The brewery was soon moved to nearby Solan, close to the British summer capital Shimla, as there was an abundant supply of fresh springwater there. The Kasauli brewery site was converted to a distillery, which Mohan Meakin Ltd. still operates. Dyer set up more breweries at Shimla, Murree (Murree Brewery), Rawalpindi, Mandalay and Quetta and acquired interests in the Ootacamund Brewery (South India).

Another entrepreneur, H. G. Meakin, moved to India and in 1887 bought the old Shimla and Solan Breweries from Edward Dyer and added more at Ranikhet, Dalhousie, Chakrata, Darjeeling, Kirkee and Nuwara Eliya (Sri Lanka, formerly Ceylon). After the First World War, the Meakin and Dyer breweries merged and, in 1937, when Burma was separated from India, the company was restructured with its Indian assets as Dyer Meakin Breweries, a public company on the London Stock Exchange.

Following independence, Narendra Nath Mohan raised funds and travelled to London, where he acquired a majority stake in Dyer Meakin Breweries. He took over management of the company in 1949 and built new breweries at Lucknow, Ghaziabad and Khopoli (near Mumbai) and the company name was changed to Mohan Meakin Breweries in 1967.

On the death of Mohan in 1969, his eldest son, V. R. Mohan, took over as managing director. He introduced a number of new products that are brand leaders today but died in 1973, soon after taking over. In the 1970s, the manufacturing activities of the company were diversified into other fields including breakfast cereals, fruit juices and mineral water under the leadership of Kapil Mohan (V. R. Mohan's brother). The word brewery was dropped from the company name in 1982 to remove the impression that the company was engaged only in beer making. New breweries were built during the 1970s and 1980s at Chandigarh, Madras, Nepal and Kakinada near Hyderabad.

Today, Mohan Meakin's principal brands are Old Monk Rum and Golden Eagle Beer. Its other products include Diplomat Deluxe, Colonel's Special, Black Knight, Meakin 10,000, Summer Hall and Solan No 1 whiskies, London Dry and Big Ben gins, and Kaplanski vodka. Asia's original beer, Lion, is still sold in northern India.