Chaayos Soonicorn Investor

Guests can personalise their tea across thousands of combinations of add-ons, milk, chai patti and sugar levels.

Patented IoT chai brewing bots integrated with the company's own point-of-sale system.

AI-driven facial recognition speeds up guest checkout and payment in cafes.

Customers dining in or ordering at Chaayos' physical cafe outlets across cities like Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Chandigarh and Bengaluru.

Customers ordering tea for delivery, which the company says makes up nearly half its revenue.

Chaayos runs a customer loyalty program aimed at satisfied, repeat guests, applied consistently across all of its cafe stores.

Under what the company calls an "Advanced Response Framework," Chaayos tracks customer reviews and commits to prompt action on negative reviews as part of its service-quality management.

Company-run cafe outlets across multiple Indian cities.

Pre-packaged snacks and tea sold through online marketplaces in addition to physical stores.

Actively growing the company-operated cafe footprint.

Building and operating proprietary IoT brewing and POS technology to power personalised tea orders.

In-house patented IoT chai-brewing bots integrated with a proprietary point-of-sale system.

AI-based facial recognition used for guest checkout and payments.

Company-operated physical cafe footprint across multiple Indian cities.

As part of its offline marketing strategy, Chaayos runs joint promotions with fitness centers and supermarkets to reach new customers.

Chaayos structures roughly 40-45% of its store leases as revenue-sharing agreements with landlords rather than fixed rent, and negotiates rent exemptions with landlords at low-footfall sites during downturns.

Tea and food sold directly from physical cafe outlets.

Tea ordered for delivery, reported as nearly half of total revenue.

Pre-packaged snack products sold through online marketplaces.

Roughly 40-45% of Chaayos' cafe stores operate under revenue-sharing lease agreements rather than fixed rent, which reduced its cost burden during the COVID-19 slowdown.

Chaayos' total expenses rose from Rs 211 crore in FY22 to Rs 349 crore in FY23 as the company scaled its cafe and delivery operations, outpacing revenue growth over the same period.

Chaayos' expense-to-operating-revenue ratio was Rs 1.56 in FY22, improving to Rs 1.47 in FY23 — meaning the company still spent more than it earned per rupee of operating revenue, consistent with its negative EBITDA margin (-41% in FY22, -27% in FY23).