An idea that started off as a ‘chai tapri’ outside a college in Shillong is a multi-crore tea business in Delhi today. Chaai Seth, a brainchild of Arpit Raj and his friends, has outlets in 27 Indian states.
While pursuing BBA in Hospitality in 2015, Arpit Raj (24) along with his gang of friends would often roam the streets of Shillong looking for good food joints. However, studies coupled with a hectic curriculum meant the boys would only get free late into the night when the town was too dark to permit meanderings.
“We thought that if we had midnight cravings, there certainly must be others like us who would love to get food delivered,” says Arpit, recounting the many stops along the way that led to him setting up the venture ‘Chaai Seth’ years later. It would go on to become one of the fastest-growing tea franchises in India.
So, in the hostel room where the boys lived, Arpit and his friends started a tiffin delivery service that was exclusively meant for those wanting to snack late at night.
Soon the boys moved to a flat, which meant they could hire a cook too to help them with orders. “I remember hiring a local Bengali woman who would prepare snacks, aloo parathas, gobi parathas, etc, and we’d get on our scooters to deliver these. Our promise was that we’d get the food to you within 30 minutes,” he reminisces.
In the journey so far, Arpit had realised an important fact: “Food connects people.”
In his own college, he often noticed how people from a vast diaspora often looked for food from their own cultures and craved it. So when Arpit and his friends were looking to start a food stall outside the campus, this idea seemed exciting, but he could foresee loopholes…Read More