Meet the entrepreneurs who took on Starbucks

DropKaffe announced its first funding round of $300,000 from Manish Singhal of San Francisco-based P39 Capital, reports Tech in Asia

They were three bright, young professionals in the land of dreams. They had what most people would call dream jobs at KPMG – one of the ‘Big Four’ auditors – in New York City. But Rakshit Kejriwal, Lakshmi Dasaka and Chaitanya Chitta yearned to build something of their own. That was about eight years ago.
 

Today, the three friends are celebrating. They have a winner with five-month-old DropKaffe, which sells coffee to high-strung, caffeine-wired Bengalureans in their offices.
 

The city has been brimming with start-ups which deliver food on-demand lately. But for that much-needed dose of caffeine, office-goers were at the mercy of vending machines that put out syrupy sweet liquid masquerading as coffee, or the make-shift tea-and-coffee shops by the streetside. Of course, Starbucks and its clones catered to those who didn’t mind spending a lot of time and money for a cup of coffee, but who could really afford to take such costly breaks during work? That’s the raw nerve Rakshit, Lakshmi, and Chaitanya chose to sooth with DropKaffe.
 

They ran a Facebook ad for 10 days, saying something like this: “Your office coffee sucks. If we promise you a freshly brewed cup of coffee delivered at your desk, will you try it?”
 

Rakshit can’t help smiling as he tells me about the response to the ad: “We had about 5,000 people signing up in no time.” That spurred them on to find a way to deliver on their promise.
 

Yesterday, the start-up announced its first funding round of $300,000 from prolific angel investor Manish Singhal, San Francisco-based P39 Capital, and a few angel investors from the US, India, and Singapore.

This is an excerpt from Tech in Asia. You can read the full article here.