“India runs on Chai”, says Amuleek Singh, Founder, and CEO of Chai Point.
We all know how important the beverage “Tea” is for Indians but hardly anyone could recognize the paucity of clean and authentic place to have chai. But the founder of Chai Point, Amuleek Singh Bijral is a renowned personality who like every entrepreneur started off with his venture to solve this very purpose of Indians. Even after being so popular and common beverage in India, it was never paid heed until Amuleek Singh Bijral took an initiative for the same with his venture “Chai Point”.
It has its Headquarters in Bangalore, Karnataka. As a part of Mountain Trail Food Pvt. Ltd, Chai Point came into being in 2010 in Bangalore.
Chai Point has 40 outlets in Bangalore and Delhi NCR(National Capital Region) and now planning open 50 outlets in Gujrat, Punjab, and Maharastra in coming months.
Why Chai?
Looking at the fact that there was no single tea venture at that point of time, he started off with his venture without giving a second thought to it
Amuleek Singh says,
There is no one out there thinking about Chai and customers would love it. So there will be acceptance.
Related- How to Start a Chai Company?
The Motto of Chai Point
- To maintain and escalate the standard of the brand
- Supply chain and logistics
- Process of the product and its execution
- Management of people
- Delivery of the products
- Hiring of people Procurement
Amuleek Singh’s way of working
The best thing is that in the domain of food and beverages, there are only a few players.
He basically works with 2 parameters
- Customers walking in the shop
- Average order size
He says that for a business to be viable, the volume of customers’ inflow and average order size of the purchase is really prominent. The founder of Chai Point believes that if these two things go right, then business is viable. Moreover, he doesn’t only talk about these two parameters for a particular store. Rather he believes that every store should have this balance and store by store attention is important for business expansion.
Amuleek Singh lays his focus on knowledge that helps him gain a right volume of the above-mentioned parameters, appreciation of his work by providing the customers rightly in terms of services and prices.
The well-defined policy of “No Smoking inside the store of Chai Point.”
We all know that few people have a habit to smoke while taking tea but It is strictly prohibited inside the stores of Chai Point. But that doesn’t mean that the smokers are alienated as keeping in mind that they are the regular customers and being the customer oriented product, there is a cigarette stand outside every store.
He believes in the consistency of providing quality to his customers as he believes that consistency is what brings the customers back.
Chai Point Mobile App
In order to meet the consumer’s ease and satisfaction, Chai Point has developed a mobile-based application by which customers can place their orders in the nearby outlets. Through this app, customers receive an advantage of discounts and freebies. Through the mobile app, the customers or users can have access to the required information of the products available at Chai Point.
Team of Chai Point
- Amuleek Singh Bijraj – CEO
- Sandesh – COO (Chief Operating Officer)
- Yaduvir Singh – Head of Supply Chain
- Yangchen Lachungpaa – Head of Delivery and Channels
- Ravi Gupta – Finance Controller
- Arun Kumar Rout – Regional partner
- Priyanka Ahuja – General Manager
- Amit Arora – Product Manager
- Tarun Khanna – Advisor
- Viveck Crishna – Advisor
Vision of Chai Point
- A chai based food and beverage retail chain for working India
- True to value orientation
- Serve the working Indians
- Be a beverage focused company
- To build a brand around liquid chai
No Franchise Concept in Chai Point
The brand of Chai Point is built from the ground and as this domain is new in the field of entrepreneurship he wants to invest his energy in other aspects as of now.
He vehemently believes in “Partner Franchise Model” rather than a basic franchise model. By “partner franchise model”, he aims to give his employees an opportunity to buy a franchise, which he deems is the core part of employment value proposition. He says,
If we want to build a high caliber of Chai Point partners, we need to demonstrate that for some of our best employees that we are willing to give an option to own a Chai Point Franchise. It would be faster to expand as the elements of loyalty and appreciation in the employees remain entrenched.
He believes that as of now it is anyhow more important for him to invest his time in optimizing and building the fundamental pillars for Chai Point.
Investors of Chai Point
Major investors of Chai Points are US Confectionery Major Hershey’s CEO John Bilbrey, Promod Bhasin, Sanjay Mirchandani, and D.S. Brar.
Chai Point has recently raised $10 million from the following investors:
- DSG Consumer Partners
- Eight Roads Ventures
- Fidelity’s Propriety investment arm
- Saama Capital
The leading investor among the above-mentioned investors is Eight Road Ventures.
About Amuleek Singh Bijral
Amuleek Singh is a son of an IPS officer
His hometown is Jammu and Kashmir. He did his electrical engineering from Punjab and then worked with Microsoft for some time and then did his MBA from Harvard University
He even worked in the US start-up.
After being a passed out from Harvard University, he had lucrative offers from the corporate world but he chose a path to start his own venture with “Chai Point”.
Amuleek Singh was fortunate enough to have family support. He had the audacity to leave the lucrative offers in the corporate world and enter into the world of entrepreneurship in India.
He firmly believes that to start a venture, “intuition” part plays an integral role in a way that you need to know the minute detail about the domain in which you want to start a venture.
Even after achieving success, he says that he is still new to the world of business and he is trying to be in the mass market.
Amuleek Singh Advice to Budding Entrepreneurs
You need to look for an opportunity in fairly methodical manner because Amuleek Singh believes that entrepreneurs are just not risk takers but measure risk-takers.
0 Comments