On-demand tea retail startup Chai Point raises fresh funding from existing investors

Chai Point, a Bengaluru-based tea chain, has raised fresh capital from existing investors for expansion, said a person familiar with deal told Entrackr.

Chai Point is backed by Eight Roads Ventures, DSG Partners and Saama Capital and has raised over $11 million reportedly till date.

Entrackr queries to Chai Point founder Amuleek Singh Bijral regarding the fresh funding did not elicit response till the publication of this report.

In India, the size of the tea industry is around $10 billion and reported to be growing at a compound annual growth rate of around 16 percent.

Chai Point is currently operative in eight cities- Bangalore, Delhi, Gurgaon, Noida, Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai with almost 100 outlets. It plans to expand its services in twelve cities. Chai Point claims to sell over 300,000 cups every day.

Almost 85 per cent of its revenue comes from the hot-and-cold chai offerings and the rest from food. The firm also claims to have good amount of revenue coming from its B2B arm.

Chai Point also own delivery fleet, and is also available through food-delivery apps Swiggy and Zomato. The Chai Point app, has seen 50,000 downloads and orders from the app contributes to almost 10 per cent of revenue.

Founded in April 2010, Amuleek Singh Bijral’s company closely competes with another startup Chaayos in the same space. Chaayos, recently has plunged into B2B for growth and roped in SpiceJet as a client.

Chaayos is backed by Tiger Global, Toppr’s Zishaan Hayath and Ola’s Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati, and the recently funded Tea Trails.  Both firms claim to break free of the legacy of the product and established counterparts, coffee retail chains such as Café Coffee Day and Starbucks and do not count them as competitors.

DropKaffe, an online startup that delivers brewed coffee and refreshments, also had raised angel funding.