ICEF Alum, Businessman Ilya Vuchenovich on Forbes 30 Under 30 List 2025
Drinksome traces its success to late 2022 when it released its first non-alcoholic gin. The company soon expanded its line of drinks to include alcohol-free aperol, whiskey and rum, paying special attention to its collaboration with Lucky Group restaurants. The year 2024 marked a real breakthrough in Drinksome’s performance: its profits enjoyed a 10-fold increase, currently standing at RUB 446 mln, and its annual output increased to 3 million units. The brand now sells in 5,000 outlets including Metro Cash&Carry, X5 Retail Group, as well as the renowned Novikov Group and Four Seasons. Drinksome’s founders expect their 2025 revenues to exceed RUB 1 bln, indicating there are solid prospects in place for the company to grow and promote its brand.
We met with Ilya Vuchenovich to find out more about his years as an ICEF student, life after ICEF as entrepreneur, recent consumer trends, and why alcohol-free gins are now a common choice.
Ilya, congratulations on making it onto Forbes 30 Under 30 List. Quite an achievement! We are glad we could contribute to your becoming a professional. Can you tell us where you were born and why you chose to study at ICEF?
I was born and raised in Moscow and I’ve lived here all my life. I made my mind to enroll in ICEF while a student of the HSE Lyceum. My other option was the HSE-NES joint programme in economics, but I opted for ICEF. It was my conscious choice to study here because ICEF’s delivery mode and depth of training suited me just perfectly.
What were your college years like?
As intense as they could be. I juggled my extensive training programme with work and was thinking of starting my own project in parallel. I would often finish my home assignments in a taxi or subway, sometimes after following my online classes from the office. ICEF is a great place to cultivate an entrepreneurial mindset: it keeps you switching between tasks, engaging with new things.
ICEF is known for its strong analytical training. How has it been helpful to you in real-life business?
Being good numbers is critically important if you want to know precisely which way the wind is blowing. I can’t but thank ICEF in this respect for the wide-ranging hard skills that it gave me, from Excel and VBA in Year 1 to Investment Management in Year 4.
Which of the experiences you gained at ICEF have proved to be the most useful in your line of business?
They all have, one complementing another. Some times I thrived on my finance skills, other times on math. But the most important thing I gained from ICEF is my ability to grasp new information quickly. There’s been so much for me to learn from scratch over these past three years, from food technology to subtleties of legal issues — I mean things I was completely new to but had to get the knack of very quickly.
Is there a course or teacher you remember most?
What I most remember is cash gaps, items missing from our stock, customers calling non-stop. All of it had to be handled amid studying for the exam in Macroeconomics course by Professor Alla Friedman.
You went to work in strategy consulting after ICEF. Which skills from ICEF did turn out to be the most useful at the time?
Corporate finance, econometrics, mathematics. A bit of everything. Consulting, like business, requires you to be versatile. It isn’t like running in the Olympics where all you need is be able to run fast. Consulting is more of a multi-sport event where you need to be good with figures, handle finance, and communicate well.
That’s why I’m glad that I chose ICEF. Each of its diverse courses gives the skills you will find helpful in a whole range of business areas and corporate careers.
How did your consulting experience contribute to your starting your own business, Drinksome?
Consulting offers just a perfect base. I worked at Bain and Boston Consulting Group where I did food and consumer trend analysis.
It wasn’t long before I acquired solid business skills and trend awareness as a consultant. By learning the ins and outs of the industries, you begin to see where the market remains still untapped.
Why did you choose to go for the niche of strong-flavored, alcohol-free drinks?
My brother and I don’t drink alcohol but love the atmosphere of restaurants with cocktails and socializing. We wanted to create an alternative that would allow us to feel buzzed without booze. That’s where the idea of our non-alcoholic gin came from.
How did you go about building the concept for your drinks?
The world’s average GDP is growing and so does people’s welfare, driving increased consumer spending. People now tend to eat out more often. They to go bars and coffee shops, experiment with food and drinks. Many are looking to try new, sophisticated, more elegant meals or drinks. Lemonades alone are no longer sufficient. Customers now expect bars and restaurants to have on offer something new and surprising.
At the same time, more and more people are looking to maintain healthy lifestyle. Consumption patterns are becoming more conscious. We see a clear trend where younger generations are giving up alcohol in favor of the drinks that serve as healthier social lubricants. Hence, we now have alcohol-free beers, functional drinks, and dealcoholized wines.
The idea of mimicking the experience of alcoholic beverages without the alcohol emerged exactly from these two trends.
How difficult was it to explain to the consumers why they needed a non-alcoholic whiskey or rum? What seemed to be your most difficult part in the beginning?
It was indeed a very difficult beginning. We thought we’d have no problem starting our business in Moscow and Dubai in parallel. The feedback that we got from Dubai’s drinking scene was just wonderful. At some point we even began to believe that starting the same thing in our home country in Moscow would be an easy job. But it wasn’t.
Reality turned out to be much more challenging. We went door-to-door offering bars in downtown Moscow to try our drinks and got denied in almost every place. The bartenders just didn’t get the point of selling alcohol-free staff when alcohol was why they had customers.
And yes, before you ask, nearly all of those bartenders are now our partners. Drinksome-based cocktails can be found in almost every bar in downtown Moscow.
How do you and Alexander divide responsibilities as siblings in business?
We both did everything at first. It wasn’t until later that we started to divide: I now deal more with the production and financial issues, while Alexander is responsible for the commercial part. A joint front is needed when it comes to product launch or foreign market entry.
Is there a formula you use as reference when defining the “authentic taste” of a non-alcoholic drink? Or do you rely solely on the consumer feedback?
We rely on many things. Consumer reviews are just one of the ingredients — and the first ones we received weren’t too grand. Later, after we explained more about how to consume and which cocktails can be recreated as non-alcoholic, the feedback changed dramatically.
But, true, the customer feedback did play an important role and we started to rely more on it when expanding our product line. It prompted us we’d better customize towards lower intensity levels and use softer ingredients.
How important is it to collab with other brands, like Lucky Group for instance, in promoting products like yours?
Not all collabs can produce equal effect. However, when you know your audience, a good collab can be a great help in promoting your brand. We started out by collaborating with some of Russia’s best known barkeepers of Lucky Group. This helped us gain ground in the segment of restaurants, bars, and coffee shops and get our first batch sold within just five days.
Drinksome is showing an impressive growth. What were the strategies that led to it?
Capacity expansion. When demand increases you’ve got to be able to meet it by expanding your production, otherwise you’ll see no growth.
In pursuit of greater demand, we made use of a whole array of strategies. Those included going on e-comm — we came out on top on OZON in our segment — and signing deals with major retail players such as METRO, X5, Okey, VinLab, and Azbuka Vkusa. We were also looking to expand our domestic coverage and are now partnering 100+ outlets throughout Russia.
Also, we are looking to include more customer attraction channels. It’s a multichannel marketing we’re using. We use various video platforms for wider reach (around 30 million views); bloggers and offline events for more effective attraction through product stories; and targeted advertising for some of our specific offers to reach their target audience.
How do you manage to scale up at no loss to the essence of your products? I know you are building a plant in Serbia.
We boast a strong team of food technologists who are doing their best to avoid losing quality. They are the people who are really hard to find and it was a stepwise process getting them onboard. Also, we regularly hold internal audits, involve external experts, and work constantly to improve our processes.
To what extent do you rely on international experience (for example that of companies like Seedlip) when developing your products and marketing strategies?
We never miss the opportunity to try the counterparts produced abroad. We taste and analyze, trying to discern those subtle notes and flavors that make that counterpart taste the way it does.
There are some really strong companies out there, like for example Lyre’s, with a modest product line but really extraordinary recipes for use in cocktails. There exist hundreds of recipes for every taste. Some companies enjoy insanely strong marketing and communication support. There’s definitely something to live up to.
Russia, Serbia… Where else in Europe or the United States would like to be to win customers?
The first thing we look at is the size of the market, it needs to be large. The second thing is how difficult the market is to break into. Some locations can be tough in terms of licensing and supply chains. We have a hearty appetite for U.S. markets but we still need to do a lot before we can go there. It’s a highly competitive product line we offer. What we lack, however, is strong local partners, but we are working to find some.
Any plans of diversifying Drinksome or starting a new brand?
We are looking into this, the process in on. One of our recent additions is non-alcoholic wines. We’re soon launching an RTS cocktails line and have released Lyte Drops, an electrolyte-containing drink intended to relieve hangover and restore dehydration, and not only. We have plenty of ideas. Giving them a go is a matter of time and resources.
How is the culture of alcohol consumption evolving in Russia and globally and does it affect your business strategy?
People continue to experiment. While earlier generations tended to stick to same traditional drinks, now every second person that I know can be well considered a sommelier, a whiskey expert, a maestro of rum, the way we knew them. Until recently, when the fashion for gin was only emerging in Russia and whiskey and cola was still a more preferred choice than gin and tonic, telling a Japanese gin from a London one was a skill of the few. Now, people seem to know everything about herbal ingredients and why Negroni Sbagliato tastes different than Negroni.
You are based in Moscow. Is running a business from here convenient?
As convenient as it can be. We are headquartered in downtown Moscow and have many specialists around who are really strong experts. Most of our team are based here as well, making it easy to run projects.
I generally find Moscow to be highly comfortable for both living and working.
Ilya, can you always make time for passions in your busy schedule? What do you like to do in your free time?
When you’re running projects you enjoy, they become your passion. My work is my hobby and my hobby is my work. I’m lucky in this sense.
Whenever there's a breather in my schedule, I go to play tennis.
What do you think has so far been your most important lesson from business?
It’s difficult to single out my most important one, but what I can’t but point to is the importance of staying fully committed. Side hustles, part-time engagements, attempts to build passive income streams or delegate or outsource, especially when your business is in its infancy, will only reduce your chances of success as an entrepreneur. Fortunately or sadly, when you’re kicking off your own business — and its start phase can be real long — you are better off doing every single thing about it yourself. Before you delegate or outsource a task, make sure you have done it a hundred times and know the way it should be done.
What does it feel like to be on the Forbes list? Has it changed anything for you personally and Alexander?
It’s nice to know Forbes noticed our performance. We are now a wider known business. Ratings like this increase company recognition, especially when owners seek growth and development.
If you were to give advice to those of ICEF students who are thinking of starting their own business, what would you tell them?
Quit your studies. I’m kidding. I think all those cases of beginner entrepreneurs dropping out of school, like Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and others, are highly individual and rather the exception than the rule.
What I would definitely advise those who want to give it a try is try now. Don’t delay starting your business. Set a realistic goal for it and start with something simple — something you can do on your own. No need to try to source ethereal millions when you can use your own funds. If your own funds aren't enough, rethink your project. You might find where you could cut its spending. If not, go for another business idea or get a job to earn extra income.