Featured Startup Pitch: Beveragewala wants to tap the huge demand for premium tea and coffee in India

By Manish Hada, Beveragewala co-founder

Elevator Pitch: Beveragewala is a one-stop for all your tea and coffee purchase requirements. We have the widest variety and offer convenience to our customers.

Product/Service Description

Beveragewala, as the name suggests, is your online provider of premium beverages, particularly teas and coffees, right at your doorstep in India. We feel that with India opening up to globalization, a lot of brands are slowly entering the market and are not very readily available. We wish to provide these to our highly esteemed customers to offer a solution which involves supplying the best products with utmost ease.

At present, we have over 35 brands and 400 products, which includes a wide variety of Black Teas, Green Teas, Oolong Teas, Herbal Teas, Red Teas, Infused Teas, Coffees, and so on.

Founders’ Story

Beveragewala has been founded by myself, Manish Hada, and my wife Puja Hada (yes, we are husband and wife and working together).

I have done a B.Sc. in Physics, followed by an MBA and an M.Sc. in Finance. Thereafter, I worked for three years in the marketing department of an educational institute in Gurgaon, India.

Puja has done a BBA followed by an MBA. She also has worked in branding and advertising for two years.

Both of us are big tea enthusiasts, and believed there is no good channel to view and purchase good teas and coffees in one place. This led to the idea of Beveragewala coming into existence.

Marketing/Promotion Strategy

Beveragewala.com is an ecommerce store and is being promoted online primarily. Since this is not a concept which is searched for or bought online currently, the primary aim is to spread visibility and create awareness that such an ecommerce store exists.

Market Opportunity

India is a tea loving nation. Our per capita consumption is quite high, and we consume over 800 million kilograms of tea in a year (as per 2010 estimates). With very limited brands prominent, consumers are looking for new brands and products, and slowly we are seeing new domestic brands and big foreign brands entering into the market. Hence, we feel that Beveragewala is entering into this industry at a very nascent and appropriate stage.

How We Differentiate From the Competition

We are a first-of-its-kind tea and coffee e-retailer in India. Hence, our biggest differentiators are the fact that we are the only player focused on this, we have the widest variety of teas and coffees, and that we are offering convenience and service which were not earlier associated with products we cater to.

Business Model

We are a pure play ecommerce model. We earn a percentage cut of every sale. Our ticket size is relatively small, and hence our target is generating good volumes.

Current Needs

We are looking to reach a targeted number of customers frequently buying from our website. Then we will be looking to raise our first round of funding to increase our marketing effort and streamline our operations.

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Headquarters: Gurgaon, India