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6 Startup Lessons which you can Learn from Chaayos Success

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Written by BusinessAlligators Support

Support Staff at BusinessAlligators is a team of business experts led by Shilpi Singh Trusted by over 100K readers worldwide.

February 3, 2016

Chaayos is the highest rated tea chain cafe in the town nowadays. They have grown to 16 plus cafes in NCR and they already spread their legs to multi cities like Mumbai and Bangalore. By this year they are planning to open 100 plus tea café all over the globe. This is tremendously huge. If you go through the history of Chaayos, then you will find that it is a newly born chain of tea café. The age of Chaayos is only 3 years old. You are also having any business idea then you can learn some startup lessons from Chaayos Success.

Approx 4 years ago, it was just an idea in the mind of Nitin Saluja, the founder, and CEO of Chaayos. He started working day and night with his wife on to it. His wife started it and after 4-5 months Nitin quits his jobs and started working full time. After 8 months Raghav Verma also joined the newly born venture. The trio put their all strengths together and after that, there was no looking back.

Nowadays everyone has an idea of start up. But very few of them can stand on and amongst “those few”, rare of them got success like Chaayos. Every entrepreneur who dreams to be successful like Chaayos must learn some lessons from the shining success of Chaayos.

Below are 6 important Startup Lessons from Chaayos Success which you can also implement into your business.

1. Small idea- Big Thinking

Every idea is small, simple and straightforward. Then what makes it special? What gives it an edge over others? It is nothing but the ability to “Think out of the box”. Selling a tea was very old and an orthodox kind of business. But, Nitin Saluja thinks differently. He decided to go ahead with the idea of selling a cup of tea in an outlet where people can sit and have a hygienic cup of tea. He visualized Chaayos as Starbucks of India and started his tea startup.

2. Passion is a Necessary Ingredient

Startups are definitely not an overnight success. It is an unimaginably difficult journey and when failure meets you on every corner of the road, you need a spark to keep that startup alive. That spark is your love and passion for your single and unique idea.

Nitin always has passion and love for Chai. He confessed

I was a chai passionate person right from my childhood and somehow it was setting in, in my subconscious. Usually, when the job pressure sets in you start to explore yourself and that is what happened with me too. That is when this thing came out and I thought this is an opportunity, let’s explore this. And that’s how Chaayos happened.”

Related- How to Start a Chai Business?

3. What is the USP of Business?

USP is a factor presented by the seller as a reason that one product or service is different and better from the others. In short, you have to make your business unique in the world of homogeneous competitors. So what makes Chaayos different? You can find a cup of tea in every corner of the city. So picking up the idea of selling a tea would have been resulting in a big failure, if Chaayos founders did not have that uniqueness in their business.

Experiments with tea” – this is their main USP. You will find 25 Different variety of tea customized in 12000 ways. Impressive! You will not find such a huge variety of customization in tea anywhere.

4. Know your Customer’s Need

When Nitin Saluja along with his wife and friend Raghav Verma started his business of tea café, He was very much confident about the marketplace for his product and service. They were aware of the fact that Tea is an essential drink for every single person in this country and there is no good place where one can sit and drink tea of his choice. Either people have to rely on street stalls or they have to spend a lot just to have a cup of nice tea with a good ambiance. He started his tea café with freshly brewed tea and nice ambiance!

Nitin states – “

Besides a few coffee drinking states, the majority of our country is a tea drinking nation. And we, me and my wife, found it a bit awkward that when you are out of the home, you are unable to get a nice cup of tea. Primarily most people are looking for ghar wali chai. But you either get a street side chai or you go to a nice place where you will not get the kind of chai that you are looking for. At these nice places, you will end up spending anything from Rs 70 to Rs 350 and still not get what you want.”

So any startup entrepreneur must be aware of what kind of customers he or she is targeting on and what are their needs.

5. Committed to give Best Service and best Product

Business is all about satisfying your customer by giving your best service to them. Chaayos stick to this policy of business religiously no matter what comes to their way. Chaayos has one basic idea to implement. They want to give their customer the best tea at a comfort level. The ambiance of the café was one of the most important parts of their work list. They decorate their café in a very impeccable way. The tea glass hanging lights, kettle table lamps, wooden tables decorate the café in a tea adda style way.

They are also focused on their quality of tea. You will always find freshly brewed tea at Chaayos as per your customizations. Recently they have started tea on demand service. They deliver tea within 20 minutes of your order.

6. Ability to Attract Investors

The best startup lesson from chaayos success is how to attract an investor. The idea behind your startup should be such a strong that it can attract investors. Or you can say the entrepreneurs should have the ability to convince investors.

Chaayos has raised initially INR 2cr from Powai Lake Investors and then Tiger Global Management invested INR 100Cr recently. How did a chai startup has raised such a huge amount? Nitin explains as follows:

  • Chai is a product that does not need any marketing.
  • The turnaround of one café of Chaayos is INR 1 Cr. By this year they are planning to open 60 Plus cafés. So it is pretty much easy to scale up to INR 100 Cr by next two years.
  • Chaayos is expanding the business outside the India also in SE Asia and the Middle East. It will strengthen their business a lot.
  • Chaayos is not limited to its tea chain outlet only. It also sells its tea blends through e-commerce sites likes Amazon and a Flipkart deal is underway.

Chaayos’ story has several learning guides for a startup entrepreneur. It is a kind of startup which starts from nowhere and went to such a high heights within a very short span of time. It will be worth to look at their strategies and implement them into yours. Success will be at your doorstep.

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