Teaching Notes: The Chaayos conundrum – modernizing chai consumption in India

Founded in 2012 and headquartered in Gurugram, India, Chaayos is a café chain focused exclusively on serving customized chai in a modern café format. Co-founded by Nitin Saluja and Raghav Verma, Chaayos grew from a single outlet into a network of over 200 cafés across major Indian metropolitan and Tier I cities, including Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The company built its brand around the proposition of “Meri Wali Chai”, offering customers 25 varieties of tea that could be personalized into more than 12,000 combinations. Priced between US$1 and US$2.2 per cup, Chaayos positioned itself as a mass-premium tea café catering...