Brewhouse Ice Tea Eyes 10,000 Outlets By 2020
How did you get the idea to start bottled Ice tea?
I have been passionate about tea and the genesis of the idea was that I wanted to create a business around tea as India is big on tea consumption and there are several gaps in the market around the end delivery to the consumer and choices available in the market, whether it’s prepared tea or tea leaves. Changing and evolving consumption habits also create new sets of opportunities. So I looked at various options such as chai bars, tearooms and tea vending machines but settled on bottled iced tea because people are moving to healthier beverages and I believe that iced tea is one of the most natural and obvious options in the non-carbonated beverage space.
What makes your teas different from other beverages?
We are India’s first real-brewed, bottled ice tea. Real-brewed means that we do not use tea powder or concentrate but we use freshly brewed tea, which we brew in our bottling plant using whole-leaf, organic tea leaves. This gives you a natural, real taste of tea which is refreshing and relaxing unlike artificial tea flavors and aromas which only try to imitate the real thing. We also maintain a lower sugar level than most bottled beverage brands, by approximately 40-70%. That’s also made possible by using natural, real-brewed tea to a large extent. Our product contains no colors and no chemical preservatives. So we are different in a lot of ways to conventional bottled beverages in very meaningful ways.
How much investment you have made till date? Please share funding numbers as well.
We’ve raised US$ 2.6 million from Food Empire Holdings, Singapore in two rounds of funding.
What is your marketing strategy for this completely new beverage?
Our marketing is very BTL driven at this stage. We participate in a lot of events, festivals etc. and also do our own sampling events which gives us a lot of opportunities to interact directly with the consumer and get the brand closer to them. In-store sampling is very effective in developing new consumers at the point of purchase. Social media is important to communicate the brand story and personality and we are constantly learning how to use that medium to its best potential. We do plan to start some ATL, including newspaper ads and OOH in 2019.
How difficult/easy is to maintain your regular customers to the brand?
We have a set of very dedicated, regular consumers who love the product and the brand and this tribe of consumers is getting larger every day. We have a unique positioning and product so obviously there are those who like it and those who love it. We’re getting discovered by these people and our job at this stage is to make it easy for more people to find us and try us. We need to keep doing what we’re doing right, get better at it, not develop any bad habits and keep delighting our customers really.
Where is the manufacturing unit for this?
Our manufacturing is located near Delhi. It’s a small unit and all our production is done in small batches with tea which is carefully and freshly brewed by our trained brewers.
What are your expansion plans?
We are currently available at over 800 locations in Delhi NCR and are now expanding pan India. We are now in over 20 cities including Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Lucknow, Jaipur, Chandigarh and Kolkata. Recently, we raised a $2mn loan from Food Empire Holdings, Singapore to strengthen our operations and be present at 10,000 outlets by 2020. We’re developing new variants and new packaging formats to penetrate deeper into the market.
