Chaayos : A Tale of 2 Chai Lovers

Chaayos : A Tale of 2 Chai Lovers

We have all had those moments with our best buddies or office colleagues when we would jokingly convince each other of doing some business together, and would finally settle for opening a Chai Shop !!! The story below is of two such people in the country, who came across the same idea, but their joke has turned up into multi crore and well know business!! The story is about Chaayos!!

Nitin Saluja, The Founder of Chaayos , had never thought of opening a chai outlet, especially not after getting through IIT-Bombay, but life doesn’t play by the book, it has its own way of throwing opportunities disguised in troubles.

The Idea:-

In 2008, while he was living in Houston in the US, Nitin Saluja and his wife were craving a cup of tea after dinner but they couldn’t find a place that served a freshly-brewed cup of strong tea. That’s when the idea of starting a tea cafe came to him.

 Two years later, Saluja returned to India and discussed the idea of starting a chain of tea cafes with his colleague and friend Raghav Verma. Both were Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) graduates who worked together at software company Opera Solutions LLC. Both were also tea lovers and realized that a potentially lucrative opportunity existed for “a good cup of tea outside of home". 

The idea led to a lot of research on tea. The duo discovered that India was predominantly a tea drinking country, consuming 30 cups of tea for every cup of coffee. At the same time, they found that more than 1,500 cafes existed for coffee—and none for tea.

 

“The value of tea consumed in the country today can be estimated at roughly Rs1 trillion; yet, most of this was inconsistent or unhygienic and not what the customer was looking for. This was a market ready to be disrupted," says Saluja.

 

It was an idea whose time had come, given the sheer size of the opportunity. This was no easy task as it required the creation of a new category. The acceptance of tea outside of homes was a daunting task. It took two years of thorough research to figure out consumer preferences that included a survey of people on the ground

 

Saluja explains: “The basic premise was to do tea in a contemporary way so that modern audiences accept it. We created the “meri wali chai"—tea customized how you like it and how you make it at home so you can have a drak (ginger) wali chai or a combination of adrak, tulsi, saunf, kali mirch with less milk or more milk or more water or less water. We were able to latch on to that. This has found a lot of love with the customer—the fact that the customer does not have to settle for any tea and they can get a good cup of tea exactly to their liking. Added to that was the ambience and the snack items that we introduced."

 Taste and Ambience:-

• When we see Chai as a product, it is very simple. But in Chaayos, customers can get 25 variety of tea and those can be customized in 12000 different ways! “Experiments with Tea” – this is the tagline of Chaayos.

• The versatility of tea with a wide range of flavors this is what their brand believes in.

• They have presented very uniqueness in their tea menu or you can say they have bold enough to do an experiment.

• Another most important feature they have added to their business is the ambiance of the outlets. The Chaayos café represents the “Chai way of life”.

The interior design of the café is as such that it relates the very core concept of tea; lamps made of cutting Chai glasses, kettles and Chai samples in taste tubes that show the experimental nature of the firm.

 The Business Insight of Chaayos:-

• Chaayos started its journey by opening its first and single store in Gurgaon Delhi in DLF cyber City.

• Today they have approx 16 stores running in Delhi and Mumbai.

• This year they are planning to open 50 Plus cafes in Bangalore, Mumbai, and Delhi. As of now, they have 200 plus working headcount for their firm and they sell approx 500 Plus order per day per outlet.

 

“We are a chai company, not a chai cafe. Whenever and wherever there is an opportunity to serve somebody ‘chai’, we want to be present.”
– Raghav Verma.

 

“Our aim is to deliver all across NCR in less than 20 minutes by August end. Chai is something for which people would not want to wait too long.” – informs Nitin.

 

The Financial Backing:-

• The Highest selling outlet of Chaayos turned an annual income of Rs 1cr. This was the greatest milestone in the business journey of Chaayos.

• The target market for Chaayos is the upcoming middle class that has money but is equally conscious of the value they get.

• Chaayos has also been able to raise an angel round from the likes of Zishaan Hayath.

• Chaayos also raised 5 million dollars from Tiger Global Management.

• Chaayos is betting that the next phase of its growth will be powered by tea delivery services and packaged tea blend that it sells through its café as well as on online market places such as Amazon and Snapdeal.

• Company Sells 10,000 cups of tea in a month and is targeting to sell three million cups of tea within 18 months with plans to open Chai on demand services. For this, they have tied up with many logistic companies to deliver Chai in 15 mins.

Nitin and Raghav have taken a simple concept to a very high height. But for them, this is just a beginning. They are all set with new ideas and concept and working on to mix these new ones with the already implemented new ones. There is no doubt that they have rivals too in the market like Chai Point and Chai Thela which are giving them a neck to neck competition!!