Proximo Spirits, the Jersey City based spirits company owned by Mexican tequila producer Becle, has named alcobev veteran Shweta Jain as Managing Director for India and South Asia. Exchange4Media broke the appointment, and it was corroborated within a day by Storyboard18, Adgully and Medianews4u, all citing Jain's own announcement on LinkedIn.
The hire lands two months after Proximo brought on Supratim Dasgupta, a twelve year Diageo India veteran, as Commercial Head for the India Subcontinent. Trade press coverage citing people familiar with the matter has framed the pair of hires as the groundwork for Becle building its own India operation, rather than continuing to rely solely on a third party importer for its Jose Cuervo and 1800 tequila brands.
A résumé built on premium spirits
Jain arrives at Proximo after a stint as Chief Marketing and Sales Officer at The Leela Palaces, Hotels and Resorts, a role she held from April 2024 to May 2025 with full P&L responsibility for the hotel group's commercial, sales, marketing and loyalty functions. Before hospitality, she spent more than six years at Diageo India, rising to Chief Business Development Officer for premium, luxury and craft, where she oversaw a portfolio spanning Johnnie Walker, Black Dog, Singleton, Talisker and Lagavulin. Earlier stops include Head of Marketing at William Grant & Sons India and more than six years at Pernod Ricard India on Chivas Regal, The Glenlivet and Royal Salute. She began her career on the agency side at Ogilvy, McCann Worldgroup and Rediffusion DY&R, and sat on the board of Indian craft gin maker Nao Spirits & Beverages between 2022 and 2024, before Diageo acquired that company outright last year. According to Adgully, her mandate at Proximo covers commercial strategy, market expansion and portfolio development across the region, with an explicit focus on tequila, craft whiskies and agave based spirits.
Why India, why now
The timing tracks a real shift in the category. Tequila and other agave spirit volumes in India have roughly tripled between 2022 and 2025, based on market data cited in recent trade reporting, and Jose Cuervo's own India volumes climbed from about 3,300 cases in 2017 to roughly 60,000 cases in 2024, according to distributor Monika Alcobev's account to The Spirits Business. That growth is small next to Jose Cuervo's global footprint of roughly 8.9 million cases sold in 2024 as the world's largest selling tequila brand, but it is enough to draw in competitors: Diageo's Don Julio and Bacardi's Patrón have both pushed into the same market, alongside smaller import specialists such as Loca Loka and Pistola. Reports on the Jain appointment note that Proximo is among the last major international spirits groups without a direct India operating unit, with most large rivals already running local subsidiaries rather than working purely through distributors.
The distributor question
Monika Alcobev has run Jose Cuervo's importation and distribution in India since an October 2023 handover and has continued to run brand activations, including a Margarita Fest campaign across more than ninety venues earlier this year. Reporting on Jain's hire suggests Becle intends to reduce its dependence on that arrangement as it builds out sales, marketing and commercial functions under a direct India entity, which would give Proximo more control over pricing, distribution terms and brand positioning than an arms length distributor deal typically allows. Proximo has not issued its own statement confirming a change to the Monika Alcobev relationship, and the scope and timeline of any transition remain unconfirmed beyond what is being reported by people described as familiar with the matter.
What this means for the shelf
Jose Cuervo, 1800 and the rest of the Becle portfolio do not currently appear in Tequila Watch's blind scoring database; Proximo is not among the houses we track, so we have no purity status or blind score to report for any of its bottlings. That will be worth revisiting if a direct India unit changes what gets imported, since a locally run commercial team typically means faster rollout of higher end expressions, such as Reserva de la Familia or Maestro Dobel, that a pure distributor relationship might not prioritize.
What we are watching
Whether Becle or Proximo issue any on the record confirmation of a shift away from Monika Alcobev. Whether Dasgupta's Commercial Head role formally reports into Jain's new Managing Director post, which would clarify the shape of the India unit. Import volume disclosures for Jose Cuervo and 1800 in India over the next two to three quarters. And whether any new SKUs, including higher end or limited expressions, reach Indian shelves under a directly run Proximo operation.