Exclusive: Chaayos scoops up $45 Mn in Series C led by Alpha Wave

Tiger Global-backed Chaayos has raised around $45 million or Rs 349.4 crore in Series C round led by Alpha Wave Ventures. The company had raised $21.5 million in its Series B round in February 2020.

The board at Chaayos has passed a special resolution to allot 13,89,756 Series C preference shares at issue price of Rs 2514 per share to raise Rs 349 crore or nearly $45 million, the company’s regulatory filing with ROC shows.

Alpha Wave led this round with Rs 207.62 crore followed by existing backers Elevation Capital, Tiger Global and Think Investments which pumped in Rs 57.48 crore, Rs 38.32 crore and Rs 45.98 crore respectively.

Founded by Nitin Saluja and Raghav Verma, Chaayos sells a variety of teas with dine-in, takeaways, and online ordering facilities. The nine-year-old firm has around  185 outlets across Delhi-NCR, Mumbai and Bengaluru. It had set a target to increase its store count to 300 across the existing market by 2022-23.

As per Fintrackr’s estimates, Chaayos has raised the new round at a post money valuation of $245-250 million. The company has raised around $85 million to date.

Chaayos majorly competes with Saama Capital-backed Chai Point and several other tea centric chains and individual brands.

The pandemic had wreaked havoc on businesses with a heavy dependency on offline operations in the fiscal year ending March 2021 and Chaayos was no exception. Its scale shrank 44.8% to Rs 54.85 crore during FY21 from Rs 99.4 crore in FY20, according to the firm’s annual financial statement.

Meanwhile, the disruption in operations during the fiscal didn’t make any difference in losses. Chaayo’s losses saw increase of 1.8% to Rs 52.06 crore in FY21 from Rs 51.14 crore in the previous fiscal year (FY20).