Chai Point Racing Ahead on Binary Code
Chai Point was started by Amuleek Singh Bijral, an IT pro with a penchant for information security; so much so he was country manager for RSA Tech. The Harvard MBA graduate interned at a Boston tech media startup for nine months and was then offered the head role for its India and Saarc operations. Every time one is met with the fact that Amuleek let go the IT industry and even all the perks of being a regional head to start making chai, it’s always astounding.
Give the entrepreneur some credit. “In India, the chai retail business is around Rs 1.5 lakh crore and loose leaf tea is pegged at Rs 33,000 crore. I can bet you that the information security industry in India is not that big,” Amuleek said with panache.
After water, tea is the second most consumed beverage in the world. Ditto in India. Amuleek, the passionate tea lover and a number savvy businessman, got into this lucrative market with Chai Point in 2010. His mission was simple: To brew the perfect cup of chai.
To date Chai Point has received close to 12 million dollars from Saama Capital, Eight Roads and DSG Ventures.
12 million dollars seems a whole lot too much for a joint that sells chai. But this Chai Point isn’t just a chai joint. It’s an ambient elegant setting to sip chai out of the classic chai glass, and is the largest chain of chai makers with close to 100 outlets in seven metro cities like Bangalore, Delhi, Mumbai, Noida, and Gurugram. The company recently opened two more stores in Connaught Place, Delhi and at Mumbai International Airport
Last year alone they sold 30 million cups of chai. Their yearly revenue growth is just under 100 percent and has an employee work force close to 900.
Tech Play
It’s not just the beautiful retail stores at premium locations. Chai Point has invested so much of its money in technology that one has to stop and wonder whether this is a tech company or a beverage company. That Amuleek left a job in IT doesn’t seem astonishing anymore – his whole business of chai is immersed and run on tech.
boxC.in started in August 2016 and is a dispenser platform of Chai Point is targeted at the corporate professionals. The aim is to be present at a chai drinker’s convenience whenever, wherever. There are already over 2,000 boxC dispensers across tech and corporate parks in Delhi, Gurugram, Noida, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Hyderabad and Chennai. The best thing about boxC is that cost of a cuppa’ chai is inversely proportional to the volume. Higher the volume less the cost of a cup. The cost of preparation can even go as low as 7 rupees while retailing starts at 30 rupees (or more).
Started so recently, the technological solutions contribute around 40 percent to the overall revenue.
Pranav Mehta, VP in charge of boxC, recounted why the dispenser unit came to be. “We know that corporate professionals consume large amounts of tea and coffee during work hours. Interestingly, we noticed that office boys from corporates nearby would come to our store and take away chai in litres on a daily basis despite having dispenser machines in their offices. This presented an untapped business opportunity for us.”
Today there are six or seven large players in the dispenser market, but none of them address three big gaps: lack of freshly brewed chai; lack of transparency in payments and delayed servicing of broken dispensers. boxC was developed to address the gaps as the IoT platform that will provide clear, detailed billing and even notify technicians when the machine needs immediate servicing all the while giving out hot, freshly brewed chai.
Then there is Shark. Developed in 2013, this is Chai Point’s cloud server that connects (points of sales) POS with inventory to ensure zero down time of the boxC dispensers.
Shirish Surti, CTO, Chai Point explained, “Chai Point used to run on a third party tech platform. But there were delays in generating sales reports, updating prices and other changes that would take extended time to be updated. So we decided to develop Shark, an in house tech platform to give real time sales and consumptions figures and to help store management more efficient.”
Shark helps Chai Point scale to any number of stores without increasing challenges of daily operations. With Shark, we know exactly what products are hot selling and at which locations. This helps reduce wastage and under stocking problems. Stores raise indents for their daily and weekly supplies using Shark, which are processed by the warehouse. This helps in tracking and planning of supply chain.
Despite the team predicting that revenue will come in equal amounts from the technological units and the retail stores, Amuleek doesn’t envision a Chai Point that has lost its love and nostalgia for the memories and experience associated with sipping chai. “We will continue to open more retails stores – that we are associated with good ambience is important to Chai Point’s identity.”
Amuleek is a firm believer that, “Especially ladies do not enjoy sitting by the road side, grime, dust and noise besmirching their enjoyment of chai after hours of hard work. It’s only necessity and lack of options that drive us to go to the 10 rupee chai setup by a shack, bicycle or portable cart.”
So what comes first? The chai or tech? The chai. But laced with lots and lots of tech.
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