Rajeev Samant studied engineering at Stanford University and then worked at Oracle. But, he says, “I really wanted to do something that I was really passionate about when I wake up every day, and that was something that I wasn’t feeling in my corporate job. I strapped on a backpack and just started moving across the world…”
He returned to his father’s birthplace, Nashik, a city 111 miles northeast of Mumbai in western India, and “noticed that Nashik was full of grapes, and no one was making wine in this beautiful place.” He then started experimenting with different wines.
Initially, Samant had a modest goal — to merely produce wine that was pleasant and drinkable. However, with the help of a Californian winemaker Kerry Damskey, “things went to a different level. We started from selling just 40,000 bottles of wine to something like 10 million bottles of wine…”
Today, Sula Vineyards is India’s top wine producer, holding about 65% of the country’s wine market.
Last updated: December 26th, 2025
