?Dogs are welcome at Chaayos' head office

Chaayos, a chai cafe chain in India, has launched a new summer beverage called Chai Frappe along with an innovative campaign called #AisaBhiHoSaktaHai.

The unique Chai Frappe combines the traditional taste of chai with the refreshing texture of frappe, breaking the stereotype that chai can only be served hot.

It is offered in three delightful flavors - Caramel, Dark Chocolate, and Magic Spice.

Through the campaign, Chaayos encourages people to think beyond their limits and celebrate creativity and innovation by challenging preconceived notions.

"We at Chaayos are thrilled to launch our newest product, the Chai Frappe, and our #AisaBhiHoSaktaHai campaign. This campaign aims to break free from the traditional stereotypes that limit our thinking, and encourages everyone to explore new horizons, said Mr. Nitin Saluja, Co-founder of Chaayos.

“We wanted to create something as refreshing as the product itself, keeping the unique tone of voice of brand Chaayos that’s relatable and quirky at the same time” said Amit Akali, Co-founder and Chief Creative Officer and Mandar Sawant, Content Director of Content Platform, Wondrlab

To extend the #AisaBhiHoSaktaHai campaign, Chaayos has partnered with several Indian brands, such as Sugar Cosmetics, My Glamm, Colorbar, The Hosteller, EazyDiner, Spotify, Bharat Matrimony, and Wingreens, among others.

Tea cafe chain, Chaayos has appointed Akash Chauhan as the Head of Human Resources.

Akash comes with over 13 years of experience in the HR domain. Prior to joining Chayoos, he was working as HR Head at cure.fit.

Chauhan worked at Urban Ladder earlier as vice president and head of human resources, last mile delivery, and customer success. He also held a position at Infosys BPO.

He has done PGDM in HR from International Management Institute (IMI), and Bachelors in Economics from Delhi University.

Chai cafe chain Chaayos has raised $53 million in Series C funding.

This round is led by Alpha Wave Ventures with participation from all existing investors Elevation Capital, Tiger Global and Think Investments.

The funds raised will be used for tech-enhancement, hiring and store expansion.

“Very early on in our journey, we took a 50-year view on the chai market and decided to take a technology first approach to build a chai brand. The latest capital raise will help us deepen our technology investments to further enhance our guest experience and build a ubiquitous brand that is an integral part of Indian society over decades to come,” shared Nitin Saluja, Founder & CEO, Chaayos.

Chaayos was founded in 2012 by Nitin Saluja and Raghav Verma with the mission to serve the world its 2 cups of daily chai and snacks.

Chaayos is one of the most hi-tech food & beverage companies globally, enabling a world-class customer experience and fast scale up. At Chaayos, guests can personalize their fresh cup of chai in 80,000 combinations and Chaayos IoT-enabled tea bots called Chai Monks, make this possible. Chai monks are patented bots that brew a cup of chai in 2 mins and avoid the need for training. Thus enabling fast scale up.

“We are privileged to partner with Nitin and Raghav on their journey of building a ubiquitous and much loved destination for Chai and snacks. A unique combination of innovations in food and drinks offerings, strong leverage of technology solutions and obsession over customer satisfaction has positioned Chaayos as a clear leader in their space,” added Deepak Gaur, Partner, Elevation Capital.

Chaayos’ AI platform enables a seamless guest experience. For instance, Chaayos facial recognition software enables faster checkouts and payments. The product recommendation algorithm guides guests through a journey of product trials carefully curated for them. The platform also powers Chaayos loyalty program which rewards guests upon their repeat visits with real time offers. Chaayos two-click ordering mobile application is the preferred mode of ordering for 52% of Chaayos regular guests. The resultant customer love that Chaayos generates is evident through a world-class NPS score of 78.

Chaayos online Chai deliveries now account for 45% of revenues.

“We are excited to partner with Chaayos - India’s most beloved chai destination. Chaayos team has been able to deliver personalized tea consistently well at scale through proprietary systems and technology. We are impressed by the team’s customer obsession, which is visible in its best in class unit economics and customer NPS,” pointed Navroz Udwadia, Co-founder, Alpha Wave Global.

Chaayos runs 190 stores across 6 cities and plans to add 100 more by the end of 2022.

Chaayos is aiming at expanding its presence to 300 stores from 80 currently over the next three years. The tea cafe chain further targets to have 100 stores by the end of the current fiscal year.

The brand is looking to go deeper into Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru, where it is present now, rather than spreading itself thin by entering new markets.

At present, Chaayos has 8 stores in Bengaluru, and 72 in Delhi and Mumbai combined.

Nitin Saluja, Founder of Chaayos, said, “Every store we open becomes profitable in 3-5 months, with no store taking more than 6 months to become profitable. The focus on stores making money is linked to Chaayos becoming profitable by the time it hits the 300-store mark.”

In the current financial year, the New Delhi-based company aims to grow revenue by 60%, without disclosing the revenue number.

“The company has been able to boost its bottom line by 5% due to use of technology, which has helped reduce wastage, improve consistency and improve stock keeping,” Saluja added.

The company has served more than 1.7 million customers, with the average repeat rate of ordering tea standing at 3.5 times a month.

Chaayos Recent Fundraise

Chaayos has recently secured $21.5 million in a mix of equity and debt funding led by Silicon Valley-based Think Investments. The round has also seen participation from existing investors SAIF Partners, Tiger Global and others. It further includes a $3 million debt investment from Innoven Capital.

Prior to its latest funding round, the company had raised $20 million.

Saluja stated, “We will use the capital to do three things, open new stores, building technology and hiring. We’ve also picked up some debt, as a business like ours where stores make a profit, servicing debt makes sense.”

Indian tea café market

Chai is more than just a cup of tea to start the day in India. It is a drink that Indians can’t live without. Indians have been obsessed with tea for almost forever. The obsession can be seen by the fact that Indians drink around 30 cups of tea for every cup of coffee. The country consumes 837,000 tonnes of Tea every year. With such high consumption of the drink, Chai QSR franchises are emerging as a huge business opportunity.

Tea Franchise: A lucrative business model

A tea franchise is a lucrative business model because of the fewer requirements it needs to start it as a business. For instance, a tea stall requires tea leaves, water, sugar, and other kitchen equipment as their basic requirement. And, in a franchise model, you just have to add up the costs of decor, seating inventory, and employees’ salaries, which also do not require much of an investment.

As per sources, a small tea franchise can be started in an average investment of Rs 9-15 lakhs (investment amount increases with the size of the outlet) for the area of about 100-500 sq ft. All of this together makes tea franchise everyone's cup of tea. 

Tea cafe chain Chaayos has ventured into Bengaluru. The Tiger Global-backed company is aiming to launch 15 cafes across the city by March next year.

The company said in a statement, “Chaayos made its debut in Bengaluru with 3 cafes. It further plans to add 12 more stores across the city by March 2020.”

Presently, Chaayos is operating 65 cafes across Delhi, Noida, Gurgaon, Faridabad, Chandigarh and Mumbai. It was started by Raghav Verma and Nitin Saluja in November 2012.

Nitin Saluja said, “Today we spread our wings to the seventh city. The potential of Bengaluru market is immense. We plan to have 15 stores by March 2020. We also expect delivery, which currently constitutes about 20 per cent of our overall business, to play a significant role in Bengaluru too.”

Raghav Verma stated, “Given the city's passion for technology, the company is looking forward to Bengaluru's response towards its tech stack.”

दिग्गज उद्यम पूँजी निवेशक फर्म सैफ पार्टनर्स, हांगकांग स्थित इंटीग्रेटेड कैपिटल और सिंगापुर स्थित विकास अवस्था निवेशक फर्म पैक्टोलस ने टी कैफ़े चेन चायोस में 81 करोड़ रुपये निवेश किए हैं। 

इससे पहले, चायोस ने वर्तमान निवेशक टाइगर ग्लोबल मैनेजमेंट के जरिए $2 मिलियन जमा किए थे। फर्म ने दिल्ली - राष्ट्रीय राजधानी क्षेत्र, मुंबई और चंडीगढ़ में 52 से अधिक टी कैफ़े शुरू किए हैं। उसकी 2018 की पहली तिमाही की आय लगभग 52 करोड़ रुपये थी। 

लाए गए निवेश को कंपनी के मौजूदा भौगोलिक क्षेत्रों में उपस्थिति अधिक बढ़ाने के लिए उपयोग में लाया जाएगा। 

चायोस के सीईओ नितिन सलूजा कहते हैं, "हमारा ग्राहकों का पुनरावृत्ति दर हर महीने 42% रहा है और उसे बढ़ाते रहने का एक ही जरिया ये है कि हम जहां मौजूद हैं, उन्हीं शहरों में हमारा समूह बढ़ाएं। पिछले 5 वर्ष में हमारी आय हर वर्ष दोगुना होती गई है। यही गति कायम रखने के लिए हम अपने स्टोर्स की संख्या उल्लेखनीय ढंग से बढ़ाने की कोशिश करेंगे।"

टी कैफ़े चेन ये दावा करती है कि, उसका हर स्टोर शुरू करने के 3-6 महीने में मुनाफा कमाने लगता है। इन स्टोर्स से उत्पन्न आय 80% से ऊपर होती है। 

चायोस सामा कैपिटल और डीएसजी कंस्यूमर पार्टनर्स द्वारा समर्थन-प्राप्त चाय पॉइंट और मुंबई-स्थित टी ट्रैल्स के जैसी कंपनियों की प्रतियोगिता में है। 

इस वर्ष की शुरुआत में, कैफ़े चेन ने जुबिलेंट फूडवर्क्स के सीईओ अजय कॉल को प्रमुख सलाहगार के रूप में निमंत्रित किया था। चायोस ने अजय को अगले 5 वर्षों में देश के सर्वोच्च 8 शहरों में 300 आउटलेट्स शुरू करने का लक्ष्य देकर नियुक्त किया था। 

Marquee venture capital firm SAIF Partners, Hong Kong-based Integrated Capital and Singapore-based growth stage investment firm Pactolus have invested Rs 81 crore in tea cafe chain Chaayos.

Earlier, Chaayos had raised $2 million from existing investor Tiger Global Management. The firm has set up over 52 tea cafes in Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), Mumbai and Chandigarh. It ended FY18 with revenues of about Rs 52 crore.

The infused capital will be used to further deepen the company’s footprint in the geographies it is currently present.

Nitin Saluja, CEO at Chaayos, said, “Our customer repeat rate across our stores has been 42% month-on-month and the only way to keep that growing is through a cluster approach within the cities we are currently present in. We will look at significantly ramping up our store count over the next year to keep up with our revenue growth, which has been doubling each year for the past five years.”

The tea cafe chain claims that its every store turns profitable within 3-6 months of its launch. The revenue earned from these stores is over 80%.

Chaayos is competing with companies like Saama Capital and DSG Consumer Partners-backed Chai Point and Mumbai-based Tea Trails.

Earlier this year, the cafe chain had roped in former Jubilant Foodworks CEO Ajay Kaul as its Chief Advisor. Chaayos appointed Ajay with the aim to scale up to 300 outlets across the top 8 cities in the country over the next 5 years. 

Homegrown tea cafe chain Chaayos is looking to scale up its presence in Mumbai and Delhi, and plans to open about 20-30 outlets in the next few months.

Raghav Verma, Co-founder, Chaayos, said, "We are looking at expanding in and around our current hubs Delhi and Mumbai. We are looking to open about 20-30 outlets in the next few months."

Chaayos currently runs 31 outlets across Delhi-NCR and Mumbai.

"We can open another 15-20 outlets in Mumbai itself going forward, as it is under-penetrated. We are looking to open outlets in Pune, Gujarat, Goa, Chandigarh, Jaipur, and highways around NCR this year," he added.

The Tiger Global-backed company is also betting big on the deliveries business, Verma said.

"Our deliveries business is growing rapidly at almost 20 per cent month on month," he said.

"We were earlier investing in third-party deliveries, but now we do it on our own.

"We were not able to deliver the customer experience we expected through third-party deliveries, so we decided to do it ourselves," he said.

Chaayos, Bengaluru-based Chai Point, is on an expansion spree. After launching in Delhi-NCR region three years ago; last month the company launched in Mumbai and is now ready to give a further boost its expansion plans.

"We are opening 10 stores between NCR and Mumbai by December this year," said Nitin Saluja, founder and CEO, Chaayos.

The company will have 25 cafes total and 16 dedicated delivery centres for its chai on-demand service by the end of December, said Saluja. And by early 2016, Chaayos will start focusing on southern markets as well.

The company is also running a pilot, in alpha phase, for a subscription model for the chai on demand service. Presently, customers have to order a minimum of two cups of chai for delivery that translates to an average price point of Rs 119.

It has also tied up with Zomato, TinyOwl, Swiggy, Grofers and Foodpanda as third party logistics providers for delivery side of business. "We do 150 deliveries a day of which 10% per cent come from third party sources," added Saluja.

At present, its outlets see 4500-5000 walk-ins a day across its 11 stores. Chaayos menu items are priced between Rs 49-139.

Chai Point, owned by Mountain Trail Foods, has raised about $10 million from Eight Roads Ventures, DSG Partners and existing partner Saama Capital.

“With its focus on operations, supply chain and consumer experience, Chai Point is well positioned to emerge as one of the leading national brands in this space,” said Kabir Narang, MD, Eight Roads Ventures.

According to the company they will use the fund raised for expansion of the outlets, hiring, and building technology. The group has also raised a seed round of funding followed by $2 million round from Saama Capital.

Started by Amuleek Singh Bijral Chai Point operates in the same segment as Chaayos, Cha Thela, Tea Trail and Tea Box.

In the last one month the Indian food business has seen lots of tea chain raising funding with players like Chaayos, Tea Trail, Tea Box and now Chai Point gaining the investors attention.

“Tea consumption in India is eight-nine times that of coffee consumption. Chai Point’s goal is to create an aspirational brand for its young consumers for whom tea drinking is a part of their daily routine. We believe in building technology to rocket our accessibility and convenience goals for the brand and now will also be deploying a bulk of the investment proceeds towards this,” shared Bijral.

Chai Point has also built its own cloud-based software platform called Shark which connects the point of sale, supply chain, employee management, delivery system, and auditing etc. in one place.

Chaayos, the chai cafe in Delhi-NCR, has added two more outlets in its portfolio. The cafe offers a wide range of chai blends along with national and international sandwiches.

The menu comprises maggie sandwich, butter chicken sandwich, keema pav and vada pav along with adrak, tulsi, kali mirch chai with 30 ml milk.

Speaking on the new launch, Nitin Saluja, Co- Founder, Chaayos, said, “Each Chai is handcrafted and made upon order. The variety of teas which Chaayos offers ranges from Indian chais like Paani Kum Chai and Kashmiri Kahwa to international favourites like Camomile tea and Moroccan Mint tea. We endeavour to provide our customers their freshly brewed chai exactly the way they like it, in a relaxed setting that is conducive to both formal and informal meetings.”

Chai-café Chaayos has launched its third outlet at Galleria Market, Gurgaon. The first two outlets are located at DLF Cyber City, Gurgaon and Infospace SEZ (near Udyog Vihar).

Raghav Verma, Director, Chaayos, said, "We plan to expand the Chaayos brand to eight to ten more chai-cafes in Delhi NCR region by the year 2014.”