Tea cafe chain startup Chaayos has raised $12 million in its Series B funding round from SAIF Partners, Hong Kong-based Integrated Capital and Singapore based growth stage investment firm Pactolus.
The fresh capital infused will be deployed towards increasing the company’s offline footprint. Chaayos gets 80 per cent of the revenue via its offline stores.
The New Delhi-based startup received the new round after a gap of one year. In October 2017, it had raised around $2 million from its existing investor Tiger Global Management in an internal round of funding.
Prior to that, Tiger Global along with the participation of Ola co-founders Bhavish Aggarwal and Ankit Bhati poured in $5 million Series A funds into the tea etailer.
Founded in November 2012 by Nitin Saluja and Raghav Verma, Chaayos has set up over 52 tea cafes in cities such as Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), Mumbai, Chandigarh, and Karnal.
Now, the startup aims to scale up to 300 outlets across the top 8 cities in India over the next 5 years.
The startup claims to sell about 4-4.5 lakh cups of tea per month and sell over 2 lakh snacks (non-beverage category) in the same time frame.
According to Saluja, each store of Chaayos turns profitable within 3-6 months of its launch, enabling better control over unit economics, reports ET.
For revenue part, the startup clocks about Rs 52 crore (unaudited) in FY18 and aims to double down the figure to Rs 100 crore by the next 24 months.
Earlier in January, Chaayos had introduced an IoT-enabled tea machine called Chai Monk. The first-of-its-kind machine is available across its stores. Besides, it also runs a loyalty programme, 95 per cent of customers are enrolled in its LoyalTea programme.
Chaayos competes with the likes of Mumbai-based Tea Trails and Bengaluru-based Chai Point, Starbucks, and Café Coffee Day.