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Before Rhea Sanghi joined <keyword id="4164636" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="BLUE-TOKAI">Blue Tokai</keyword> <keyword id="6354798" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="coffee">Coffee</keyword> Roasters as its Community Manager in October 2015, she had never been much of a coffee drinker. Now, coffee is such a deeply-ingrained part of her life that it’s hard for her to imagine how she lived without it, she confesses. In a similar vein, Blue Tokai aims to give India’s coffee drinkers, traditionally used to instant coffee or the likes of Barista and Cafe Coffee Day, a transformative experience with its specialty blends. The idea for Blue Tokai took root in the minds of the co-founders, Matt Chittaranjan and Namrata Asthana, when they moved from Chennai to Delhi in 2012 and found themselves out of options for fresh and accessible specialty coffee. It all started with some farm visits Matt and Namrata visited a number of coffee estates in southern India, mainly in Karnataka, with the end goal of sourcing beans for the domestic retail market. Rhea says that the farmers scoffed at the couple upon hearing this. They said that there wasn’t a market for specialty coffee in India. Before Blue Tokai and other specialty coffee brands came along, these coffee farmers mainly exported their produce. India ranks among the largest producers of coffee in the world, but exports around 70% of its beans to the other countries, most notably Italy and Australia. The high quality blends were exported, while the cheaper, less flavourful beans were meant for instant coffee. Matt and Namrata invested in a roaster and began sourcing the beans directly from the farmers. After roasting the beans, they would sell the roasted beans to customers through online channels. Slowly but surely, the company helped drive a paradigm shift in India’s coffee <keyword id="24504" type="ORGANIZATION" weightage="20" keywordseo="culture">culture</keyword> by introducing people to its single-estate Arabica coffees. “This is how Blue Tokai demonstrated innovation,” Rhea laughs, “by giving people good coffee that didn’t burn their tongues and tasted naturally sweet instead of bitter.” Changing tastes The company wasn’t alone. Blue Tokai started operations as Starbucks was ramping up its presence in India through a joint venture with Tata- an indicator that Indian consumers were ready for change. “In the last few years, specialty coffee has become the go-to choice for a specific kind of Indian,” Rhea says, “the upwardly mobile metro-dwellers who are used to a certain lifestyle. They’re looking to curate their world with good brands and are willing to travel lengths to get their daily dose of caffeine, even though they don’t necessarily have to.” In around five years, Starbucks’ has already reached a 100 outlets in India, buoyed by an aspirational urban middle class that is looking to sip local brews while working at cafes. Apart of raising consumer awareness, Starbucks’ growth has demonstrated that the coffee market is taking off in India, and that there is room for other brands. In addition to Blue Tokai, a number of homegrown coffee brands have sprung up in the last few years - Bangalore’s Flying Squirrel and Third Wave Coffee, Goa’s Sussegado and Mumbai’s The Indian Bean - all of which have looked to plug the market gap with their domestically sourced, specialty blends. Even though they’re all vying for shelf space in retail stores, selling wholesale to restaurants and experimenting with the cafe model, their national reach is made possible through e-commerce. The end result? Indian consumers are spoilt for choice. Blue Tokai’s retail customer base mostly comprises people between the ages of 27 and 35 who are more aware of their choices and what they’re consuming. When asked what sets Blue Tokai’s customers apart from those of big chains, Rhea quips, “Our customers are people who know the difference between good coffee and great coffee.” Rhea joined Blue Tokai just as it was launching its first cafe, which was attached to its roastery in Delhi’s Saiyad Ul Ajaib area. In her first few months, she was privy to the roastery’s escalation to a full-service cafe. “With each day came more customer feedback to act on, more staff to train and more additions to the menu.” She was also charged with leading the company’s social media strategy and building a community through events like brewing classes. “Why the cafe?” I ask Rhea. The idea was to have an espresso bar where prospective customers could taste their coffee before purchasing a particular blend of roasted beans. Blue Tokai was primarily in the business of online sales before launching the cafe. However, Matt and Namrata soon realised that no one in the market was offering good, freshly-brewed coffee for direct purchase. “We started selling cortados, flat whites and pour overs,” Rhea says, “and once that took off, people said that they wanted food options, WiFi and power outlets.” Caffeine-induced growth The company’s growth is impressive.There were around 15 to 20 employees at the company when she joined. There are now 140. I’m talking to Rhea in Blue Tokai’s fifth cafe, at Gurgaon’s Bristol Chowk. They currently have seven outlets, spread across Bombay and Delhi, with an eighth one slated to open in Panjim, Goa by the third week of April. “We never intend to go the franchising route,” Rhea explains, “all our cafes will be owned and operated by us so we can maintain our quality”. Rhea is currently Blue Tokai’s head of marketing and partnerships. Her role covers all three facets of Blue Tokai’s business: the online retail segment, the wholesale segment, which involves supply arrangements with 400 partners such as restaurants, hotels and corporates, and finally, the cafes. She has more than a few things on her plate at the moment. She’s building a team to handle cafe operations and customer service on a zonal basis. She’s working to streamline Blue Tokai’s social media presence. She’s growing the B2B sales program. She’s tying up with partners for a range of events such as India Art Fair, Magnetic Fields and Design ID. She’s onboarding more food partners to strengthen the menu at Blue Tokai’s cafes. She’s also working with smaller food and beverage brands on cross-promotion opportunities and pop-ups. It seems that this emphasis on community has paid off. “We have amazingly loyal customers,” Rhea says. “We try to be as approachable as possible, which helps us get a lot of constructive feedback from customers.” “What else sets Blue Tokai apart?” I ask her. It’s the kind of ingratiating question so common in interviews with company insiders, one that invariably unlocks a number of empty buzzwords and feel-good catchphrases. But Rhea doesn’t disappoint: “We are farm-to-cup in the truest sense.” The company’s purpose, from the very beginning, was to cut out the middleman and give its coffee farmers the credit they deserve. Most coffee chains or distributors buy their coffee through a series of intermediaries and sell their products weeks after the beans have been roasted. Blue Tokai sources the beans from 11 estates, as detailed on its website, roasts them at least a few times a week and sells them directly in cafes or ships them within one or two days. Rhea also alludes to the company’s emphasis on transparency. “Everything we do is very consciously done. All our products go out with a roast date and the details of the estate that it was sourced from. Our roasteries in Bombay and Delhi are open to the public so they get a first-hand insight into the roasting process.” We’re nearing the end of our interview. I ask Rhea about Blue Tokai’s plans for the short-to-medium term. “We want to make our coffee more accessible,” she says, “ the idea is to open more cafes and be in as many places as possible.” In addition to Panjim, the company is considering expanding into other Tier-2 cities. “People in places like Jaipur and Surat drink A LOT of coffee,” Rhea explains. Blue Tokai is also planning to expand its product slate. “We’re looking to sell brewed coffee through retail channels - bottled, cold brew and nitro, mainly. The market for preserved, ready-to-drink coffee has a lot of potential.” Rhea needs to get back to work, her phone has been ringing incessantly over the past hour. I conclude with one last question. “Has your experience at Blue Tokai made you confident about starting your own company one day?” “Yes” she replies almost immediately. She laughs as she gets up. “It’s hard to imagine how it wouldn’t be coffee-related, though.”

“We are farm-to-cup in the truest sense”: How Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters has carved a niche for itself in a niche (but growing) space

<ul><li>When you start an online business, there are so many things you wish you didn’t have to worry about. </li><li>However, with the ability to start an online store easily, Shopify has given Blue Tokai partners more time at hand to find better ways to work together. Here is how they made it happen. </li></ul>The Beginning Started 2013, Blue Tokai was founded with a simple mission to introduce people to great-tasting coffee grown in India and set a coffee culture that told them the difference between beans that were roasted with utmost care and those that simply didn’t make for the perfect brew. They started out by introducing their coffee into the Indian market through cafes in New Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Gurgaon, Kolkata, Noida and Goa. The idea was to be able to develop roast profiles and focus on the brewing of each cup they served to ensure their customers got an unparalleled coffee experience. To further enhance this experience, right from making refractometers essential for cafe brewing to holding advanced sensory learnings for junior roasters and experimenting with processing at the farm level, Blue Tokai is constantly evolving the way Indian coffee is treated, experienced or communicated about. Sharing the mission behind launching the brand, Matt Chitharanjan, Co-Founder at <keyword id="5280414" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Blue-Tokai-Coffee">Blue Tokai Coffee</keyword>, said, “We wanted to bring the best brews to our customers. So our mission has always been very simple - make high-quality coffee more accessible to everyone through our cafes and our website. When you start an online business, there are so many things you wish you don’t have to worry about and Shopify helped us not worry about this aspect of it. We were a two-person army; one would do the roasting and the other was focusing on the packaging so we had to make sure we were choosing a platform that wouldn’t burden our journey.” On starting an online store The long-term goal for the company was to make great coffee available to everyone and only so many people could visit their cafes. That’s when they decided to take their business online to be able to make their coffee a household name across the country and chose Shopify as their e-commerce platform. As of today, Blue Tokai’s entire in-cafe coffee range is available on their <keyword id="9922585" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="online-coffee-store">online coffee store</keyword>. The brand has also shared their story of starting a coffee business in India, how they chose the farms they work with today, their roasteries and more, to be able to set the tone for the culture they’re about to make their customers experience. Unlike the in-cafe experience, Blue Tokai knew that it was important to share how each coffee variant available in their store was different from the others. In a country where the knowledge about coffee or how it is brewed is limited, the brand took it upon themselves to educate their customers. Their online coffee store is not just a visit and buy experience. They have gone above and beyond to ensure they can help each visitor find their perfect brew. After all, selling coffee online does take effort! Here’s how the brand strengthened its <keyword id="72712" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="online-presence">online presence</keyword>: 1. Product pages that hold a conversation Just as the baristas would when you walk into the Blue Tokai cafes, each of the product pages on their site holds a conversation with the visitor. They don’t just list the variants on their online coffee store but also have taken the time to explain their making, and how each one is different from the other. The product pages describe how the coffee is made, where it comes from and the taste one can expect from it. They’ve also added recipes to make the perfect hot and cold brew to ensure their customers get to experience coffee the same way as they could at their cafes. 2. Simplest guides to help brew the perfect cup of coffee Not all of us know how to brew our coffees well. For most, it is just about adding a teaspoon of coffee into hot water and adding milk. But that’s exactly what Blue Tokai wanted to change while setting the coffee culture in India.To help their online customers learn to brew the perfect cup, the online coffee store doesn’t just offer a variety of starter kits and equipment, but also a blog with easy-to-follow guides. Clear coffee proportions and recipes for the perfect hot and cold brews. 3. Chatbot and live chat assistance to pick the right coffee Think about the last time you walked into a cafe and took almost ten minutes to decide what you wanted. Now think how long it would take to make the same decision online when there’s no one to guide you in the right direction. Blue Tokai knew this was an important aspect of being able to deliver the same coffee experience as in their cafes, on their online coffee store. The brand implemented a chatbot and a live chat on the store to coffee recommendations, based on where the visitor is in their journey with coffee. It’s a simple chat that guides you step-by-step to finding the right coffee for you. <div type="image" title="Blue Tokai - chatbox" msid="78062117" hostid="261"></div> 4. Hygiene page to address COVID-19 concerns A more recent addition to their online store is a hygiene page, owing to the COVID-19 outbreak. Blue Tokai understands the concerns of their customers and knows it is important to face them head-on, instead of leaving it ambiguous. With a hygiene page, the brand shares how they’re ensuring quality coffee standards as usual, in addition to the safety measures being followed at their farms, their roasteries and the cafes that are slowly opening for dine-in. With the ability to start an online store easily, Shopify has given the Blue Tokai partners more time at hand to find better ways to work together and with their roasters, focusing on what matters the most to their brand’s vision and mission - turning a cup of coffee into an experience with carefully roasted beans and slow-brewed coffee.

How Blue Tokai took their cafe brews online

We all love a good <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/Drinking-lots-of-coffee-is-associated-with-a-longer-life/articleshow/49838843.cms">cuppa</a> but how many of us really know what our coffee tastes like? I had no clue until I spoke to Matt Chitranjan, the co-founder of Blue Tokai, who told us that most of the time, the coffee we start our day with, is almost stale! 
 
To understand better, I decided to visit his cafe, Blue Tokai, in the city. Located in an inaccessible corner of Saket, my first thought was why would anyone even come here? However, as I stepped in, the strong aroma of coffee fills up my senses. Several bags of coffee beans are neatly stacked up in a room while two women are busy milling the beans. 
 
The rest of the space has three tables lined up where one can choose their choice of coffee from the menu. The menu too is pretty interesting. It doesn’t just offer you coffee, it also gives a brief description of the estates from where the respective coffee beans have been sourced from. 
As Matt and I both sit down, I ask him what I had been wanting to ask him since I walked in—Why have you opened your first café in such an inaccessible location? 
 
“Well, there are a lot of offices around here. So a lot of people come in for coffee during their breaks,” he says. “And we will soon be starting our delivery services, which is why this place is pretty convenient,” Chitranjan adds. 
 
This is the first offline retail outlet for the company, which for the past three years, has been operating as an online coffee roaster, delivery coffee pan India. “We deliver in Delhi, Mumbai, Bangalore, Odisha, Bihar, Rajasthan and almost all cities in India,” he notes. 
 
A former economist, Chitranjan landed in Chennai for a short stint in development finance, where he met his future wife Namrata Asthana. A coffee hobbyist, he and his wife managed to get a decent cup of coffee while they were down south. By the way, down South, people love their filter coffee. 
 
However, when they move to Delhi, they were disappointed with the coffee that was served in the high-end cafes of the city. “The coffee that they offer is bad. While Café Coffee Day serves Robusta coffee, <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/The-incredible-rags-to-riches-story-of-Starbucks-billionaire-Howard-Schultz/articleshow/49487899.cms">Starbucks </a>offers Arabica. However, the coffee that they sell has been roasted a couple of months ago down South. So, what is being served is not fresh,” he tells BI India. 
 
And that’s how Blue Tokai was started. A coffee roaster initially, he realized that coffee drinkers in this part of the country had no idea about what good coffee was. “We did not start as a proper business with any particular strategy in place. Rather, it started as a need-based thing, which ultimately turned into a business venture,” he recalls. 
 So, how does he plan to beat competition in the market? After all, while Café Coffee Day dominates the mass market, <keyword id="6377922" type="CITY" weightage="20" keywordseo="Starbucks">Starbucks</keyword> rules the premium segment. And with <a href="http://www.businessinsider.in/McDonalds-and-Starbucks-face-backlash-after-opening-locations-in-a-cultural-heritage-site-in-China/articleshow/49837935.cms">McDonalds</a> entering the coffee segment with its <keyword id="331136" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="McCafe">McCafe</keyword>, the market has really spiced up. 
 
“The market is really small and we have been competitively priced. A pack of Indian coffee in Starbucks would cost you nearly Rs 1000 bucks while we offer Indian coffee for just Rs 300,” explains Chitranjan. 
 
Besides, consumers now want to really understand how coffee actually tastes. Blue Tokai has been engaging with the consumers through their blogs. Also, the company has seen a substantial rise in the queries for their coffee. “Initially, our consumers used to expats and NRIs. But now, a lot of young professionals want to understand the different experiences of coffees. And this is primarily through organic promotion that is through word of mouth,” he says. 
 
Interestingly, coffee chains in India have been drawing 80% of their revenues from their food business instead of their coffee business. With an initial investment of about Rs 40 lakhs, the company has been recording profits year-on-year. “ We have also raised a funding of Rs 3 crore from two investors,” says Chitranajan happily. 
 
The company plans to expand its alliances business with restaurants and has currently partnered with the likes of The Oberoi, Park Hotel and Lodhi Garden restaurant in the city. Apart from this, it will also open two to three outlets in both Delhi and Mumbai. But unless, this doesn’t happen, it seems coffee lovers will have to survive on the dope doled out by our dear overpriced cafes in the city.

Move over Starbucks and CCD, Blue Tokai gives you the real taste of coffee

Blue Tokai to Zepto: What are the Indian start-ups that raised $466 mn last week?

<ul><li>Things have been challenging for small and medium scale businesses that are bearing the brunt of the <keyword id="91743" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="lockdown">lockdown</keyword> due to low consumer spending and disruptions and delivery and production.</li><li>Canadian e-commerce company <keyword id="1715801" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Shopify">Shopify</keyword> has been working closely with <keyword id="6393272" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="MSMEs">MSMEs</keyword> to help them strengthen their online presence and to future-proof their business.</li><li>Sandeep Komaravelly, Director of International Growth, Shopify walks us through all that the platform has been doing and how that has helped support these businesses during these adverse times. </li></ul>The lockdown has hurt most businesses and sectors across the world. Most are now working on ways to weather the storm, to come out of it with minimal damage. However, the Medium, Small and Micro Enterprises (MSMEs) have had to face massive losses. It is no surprise that the MSMEs have been the focus of the government’s relief packages because without external assistance, it will be difficult for most of these businesses to sail through. This is where Shopify, a Canada-based e-commerce company comes in. Since its inception, the company has been working on empowering entrepreneurs by helping them create and develop their businesses by removing the barriers that exist in selling online. While it has been helping power businesses in around 175 countries around the world, in India, it has worked with brands such as Nush by Anushka Sharma, Raymonds, Blue Tokai, WoW Cosmetics, Starstruck and John Jacobs eyewear, to name a few. The role of Shopify is to help these organizations operate and grow their business across their own direct-to-consumer website, online marketplaces, and social networks, while remaining in full control of their business. As a part of their efforts to support these MSMEs during the lockdown when many of these businesses have been adversely impacted, Shopify came up with a range of offers to help small and medium businesses across India adjust to the new normal and to help them increase efficiency while selling online. The aim of these offers was to make it easier for businesses to get back on their feet by helping them offer their customers with a good shopping experience, while also helping reduce monthly costs. According to the platform, merchants using the platform can save over Rs 1 lakh in partner credits through Shopify’s eCommerce solutions from industry-leading service partners. We recently caught up with Sandeep Komaravelly, Director of International Growth, Shopify, who told us all about the platform and its efforts towards supporting MSMEs. Excerpts: Q) MSMEs have had to face the brunt of low consumer spends. What has your priority as an organization been in these last few weeks to make things easier for these businesses? Shopify helps entrepreneurs as they transform an idea into a business. We offer a platform so easy to use that merchants are free to focus on developing their products rather than overcoming technical limitations. Analyzing the impact of the pandemic in India and an in-depth analysis of how consumer behavior has changed, we have created solutions for merchants looking to set up and grow their online business. Through our network we are extending attractive offers from partners across categories. Over Rs 1 Lakh in partner credits can be saved with these offers from leading technology, solution and service partners such as Razorpay, PayTM, Shiprocket, Adyogi and Delhivery to name a few. We also hosted our first-ever virtual Reunite session in May to introduce our latest innovations on Shopify to help merchants from across the world future-proof their businesses. We have introduced a number of new features, such as Shopify Email, Pick-up, Express themes, etc for merchants in India. Q) What kind of impact has there been on <keyword id="44779" type="COMPANY" weightage="20" keywordseo="SMEs">SMEs</keyword> and MSMEs? Have you come across businesses that have had to shut shop due to the Covid impact? Even in usual circumstances, SMEs and MSME’s are more vulnerable to competition or the slightest change in the market. The pandemic and the subsequent lockdown has impacted the growth of their business. They have been facing major challenges like lack of financing, delay in payments, paused production and fall in consumer demand. Having shared this, in spite of the hurdles it has been inspiring to see the strong resilience showcased by the SME community. They have been agile and quick to adapt to the new normal of digitization. We have seen SMEs taking their business online and setting up e-stores to reach out to their customers in the fastest possible manner. There are some who are also selling masks and protective equipment addressing the need of the hour of their customers Q) What were some of the major challenges that these merchants faced during the lockdown days? How have you been able to help? The most immediate challenge for a merchant has been to be agile in moving online to safeguard their businesses and facilitating local delivery. In an immediate response to the challenges faced by merchants we have released a new one-page theme called Express that enables merchants to get online quickly. As of March 20, selling gift cards has been available to all merchants, and Shopify has seen more merchants utilizing this feature than ever before. We also introduced Shopify Email that helps merchants build more meaningful relationships with their customers, and to make email marketing easy and accessible to businesses who are new to digital marketing. Shopify also offers merchants flexibility to enable pickups, they can set up the option for customers to pick up their online orders at your retail store or any location that they choose. Q) You work with a lot of partners. How has this integration and collaborative model helped you strengthen your offering? Shopify’s partner ecosystem acts as a moat to the company. Developers build apps (plugins) for merchants that act as an extended feature set and help in greater product market fit across the world. Developers sell these apps globally through the Shopify app store and have built million dollar businesses out of India. India has always been the biggest export hub for software services. Service partners on Shopify help merchants build a website, design, do digital marketing and every possible service that an ecommerce merchant needs. This ecosystem helps merchants use Shopify in a Do-It-For-Me manner, and focus more time on their business and growth. We are presently working to grow our influencer network in India like we have in the US. Bloggers, Youtubers, educators et al help new entrepreneurs learn the specifics of ecommerce and how Shopify can be a platform that supports their business end to end. Q) What kind of business impact have you faced as an organization during the lockdown? One of the key trends that we have seen during this period is the demand for shopping locally. More than ever, merchants need efficient ways to connect with their local customers today and in the future. Globally, average daily local orders on Shopify for the six weeks ending April 24, grew by 176%, compared to the prior six weeks, coinciding with the introduction of physical distancing measures. As of April 24, 26% of brick-and-mortar merchants in Shopify’s English-speaking geographies were using some form of local pickup and delivery solution, compared to just 2% at the end of February. Shopify is accelerating and shipping products that will help merchants future proof their businesses. Historically, necessity breeds innovation. By making it easy to start and maintain a business, we continue to help merchants bring to life the innovations spurred by this unprecedented world event. We remain committed to removing the barriers that exist for merchants starting new businesses. Q) As we are slowly coming out of the lockdown, what were your learnings as a leader? We realize even more that preparedness is key and this refers to multiple scenarios. It is important that as organizations and business leaders we are quick to adapt to any given situation. It is also important to dedicate time and effort towards keeping employee morale high especially in situations like this. A dedicated and highly motivated workforce will strengthen any organization and ensure a joint effort towards meeting organization goals even during a downfall.

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“We are farm-to-cup in the truest sense”: How Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters has carved a niche for itself in a niche (but growing) space

Dilsher Dhillon

How Blue Tokai took their cafe brews online

BI India Partner

Move over Starbucks and CCD, Blue Tokai gives you the real taste of coffee

Purba Das

Blue Tokai to Zepto: What are the Indian start-ups that raised $466 mn last week?

Prerna Tyagi

How Shopify is helping MSMEs and SMEs sail through the lockdown by helping them strengthen their online presence

Samarpita Banerjee

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