Chai Point Plans 30 New Stores by March’18

STARTED IN the year 2010 by a Harvard graduate Amuleek Singh Bijral, Chai Point is on its expansion spree and plans to open 30 new stores by March 2018. Spread across eight cities with over 100 stores in total, Chai Point is running on an Omni Channel business strategy- Stores, Chai on call, boxC.in and launch of loose leaf tea (LLT).

“By 2018, we estimate the business to grow by 90 – 100 per cent over 2017 in revenue terms. Making a strong foray into Chennai, our focus markets for the year would be NCRY and Mumbai as we would continue to add new stores after establishing ourselves strongly in Bangalore,” said Bijral in a conversation with BW Hotelier.

In the year 2016, Chai Point launched boxC.in, a first of its kind IoT enabled tea/coffee-dispensing machine aimed at the corporate clients. “Currently, we have more than 2,000 active installations of boxC.in and it contributes 40 per cent to the overall revenues of the company. We expect boxC.in to grow at 100 per cent for the next five years,” Bijral told us.

boxC.in is currently annually growing at the rate of 125 per cent and is expected to keep this momentum for the next three years. In addition to this, the delivery model is also growing at 250 per cent  y-o-y as informed by Bijral.

Bijral feels that having the largest corporate workforces in the world, people in India are not able to enjoy an authentic cup of their favourite beverage while at work. According to him the launch of boxC.in has bridged that gap. “This year, in October, we launched an Android version of boxC.in with advanced IoT capabilities, which ensured remote trouble shooting, more beverage options among many other new features,” he added.

The Chai retailing segment is witnessing an exciting phase and the investors too are watching this space keenly and putting their money where the mouth is. Large corporates have also announced their plan to foray into this segment. “We are planning to raise Series C round of funding to strengthen our brand across various Omni channel platforms,” Bijral informed.