“We Now Have A Platform From Where We Can Really Scale Up:” Chaayos Co-Founder, Raghav Verma

Chaayos has had quite an eventful year, wresting $5 million from Tiger Global, in its first ever non-tech investment, for a Series A round of funding, more than doubling the number of outlets and venturing into Mumbai’s salty air. And the company that is overhauling one of India’s favourite pastimes, drinking chai, shows no signs of halting with a promising 2016 ahead of them.

“We definitely are looking at expanding into Bengaluru and Pune in the next quarter itself, before the end of the financial. Post that, we want to move into the other metros. Our chai delivery concept has been in a kind of beta stage so far, so now we are really looking at scaling this up,” says Chaayos co-founder Raghav Verma, outlining the company’s roadmap at the sidelines of IMI New Delhi's entrepreneurial summit, Emerge.

At the beginning of 2015, Chayyos had around 6 outlets, that number has now grown to 14 and according to Verma, this will swell to 20 even before the year ends.

“It has been a year of many firsts for us. Before this year started we used to work out of our cafes, now we have our own dedicated office. Our team has expanded from about 6 people at the head office level to more than 50,” says Verma, “We also started delivering chai and that has been really well received. In fact, we are going to start delivering in Bombay in the next week.”

For many, tea’s basic-ness, traditionally set against a living room or a local chai stall makes it had to believe that a cafe style model could and has actually begun to disrupt they way tea has been consumed for centuries in the country. However, Verma believes that the question all along was not “Why chai?” but “Why not chai?”.

Talking about what really made the concept click, Verma explains that sticking to the basic simplicity of tea and just emulating the way it was consumed, rather than looking at changing things was the basic idea.

“What really worked for us is that we stayed true to the idea of chai and the way that people like to have chai. So we did not go and start up a gourmet tea room or create flavours which were more Western in nature. For instance, some people before us had tried almond chai and hazelnut chai. Everything for us was using Indian flavours that click with an Indian audience. We like to have an adark, tulsi or elaichi chai,” says Verma.

“Another thing that worked for us is that we offered customization and Indians are really particular about the way they like their chai, so you can't have a one size fits all. Everybody has their kid of chai and we allow that,” he adds.

The folks at Chayyos are confident the concept would take off in India’s tier II and III cities at well, however they are currently looking at pin-holing their focus on consolidation in the metros, just because, as Verma says, “there is just so much scope for opening up chai cafes in Delhi-NCR and Mumbai itself.”

Not actively looking at any new rounds of funding and a focus on rapid expansion, app-order enablement seems to be the immediate path for Chaayos.