Tea retail chain Chai Point uses preference share route to raise Rs 60 cr

Co-founded by Harvard Graduate Amuleek Singh Bijral, Chai Point has emerged as one of the largest omni-channel beverage brands in the country

Mountain Trails Foods Pvt. Ltd, which owns food-and-beverage brand Chai Point, has raised Rs 60 crore from investors including Eight Roads Ventures, Sama Capital, Milestone Capital and DSCGP Souza.

The company has raised the funding by allotting preference shares of 1,22,130, according to the financial data accessed by business intelligence platform, Tofler.

Chai Point, co-founded by Harvard graduate Amuleek Singh Bijral, has emerged as one of the largest omni-channel beverage brands in the country. It now has more than 150 stores across eight cities, 3,000 dispensers across 16 cities and does over 300,000 deliveries per month. 

The company is increasingly making its packaged product portfolio available across online as well as offline channels. All its channels of business are powered by its internally developed Amazon Web Services (AWS) hosted technology platform called ‘Shark’. It powers  Chai Point’s multiple channels such as stores, delivery and distributors.

For instance, If an existing customer enrolls with ‘face recognition’ feature via ‘Shark’ then the phone number mapped to the facial scan is populated in point-of-sale (POS) along with the reward points and wallet balance associated with the phone number. This  reduces consumer iteration at purchase.

The firm has also enabled its dispensers with Internet of Things (IoT) technology. This way the functioning and location of the machine can be tracked via cloud which provides specific particulars if a machine isn’t functional or has been unplugged, or is undergoing a software malfunction.

Chai Point in April last year raised $20 million in Series C from Paragon Partners. Other investors backing Chai Point included DSG, Eight Roads Ventures and Saama Capital.

Valued at Rs 2,570 crore in 2018, India is now the world’s 10th fastest growing market for specialist coffee and tea retail chains, according to a report by market research firm Euromonitor International. Cafe chain market is one of the fastest growing categories in the country’s consumer food service industry and it is expected to grow at 6.9 per cent a year to Rs 4,540 crore by 2023 in terms of sales, according to Euromonitor.