DropKaffe- Bangalore

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Of all the things we like to know about the ventures we talk to, the team at TYT is always curious how the idea for the venture came to be. We find it even more fascinating when we see people draw ideas based on their personal experience and turn into an interesting venture. It was like that for the founders of DropKaffe, India’s first online coffee subscription service. Their mission?- “to bring the experience of consuming coffee in the most convenient way possible – suited to your taste and delivered to your doorstep.” As a coffee lover myself, I have to agree that sounds like a wish come true.

“DropKaffe was the result of solving our own pain. We have lived and worked in New York for several years before moving back to India to pursue our start-up journey in Bangalore. We are coffee lovers and big time consumers. But enjoying a much needed coffee at work was always challenging. The problem gets accentuated especially when you want your coffee for takeaway. It was always a tough choice to decide between the decision to carry a cup of coffee back to your desk that would burn your hand / spill over or to stand on the street-side and gulp it as if it was your last cup of coffee, ever. We even tried hiring a runner who would get our coffees, but quickly realized that it’s neither economical nor sustainable. All in all, our frustrations grew and intent to resolve our coffee troubles became firmer. We started researching for solutions. We realized nobody delivers coffee – not in
Bangalore, not anywhere.”

So these coffee lovers turned to e-commerce which in their own words is “a solution for anything and everything” To their surprise nothing existed for coffee, “which is the 2nd most consumed beverage after water.” Once they got in touch with more coffee lovers they saw that this sentiment was a shared one. “We started validating whether there are more people who feel the same way and, quickly realized that there are thousands of folks like us in Bangalore. After speaking to a lot of friends, colleagues and others we realized that the coffee options at offices were also limited. Between the office vending machine and the cafeteria, getting a coffee of choice suited to your taste was a big problem.” They came up with a solution –DropKaffe.
So how does it work? Simple, logon to DropKaffe and choose a coffee of your choice! DropKaffe currently gives you an option between filter coffee, Latte and Americano. Choose your preferred delivery time (2 morning & 2 evening slots) and number of coffees (packages of 5 or 20 coffees), and that’s it. “We want our customers to sign-up for our service only after they get the taste of our coffee and more importantly the entire experience. We have conducted several coffee tasting trials for our customers across Kormangala, Indiranagar and Bangalore since we started!”

The ordering may sound simple, but the work that goes behind it is not quite so. “We are investing in every aspect of the customer experience beginning with where we source our coffee from
(we have both domestic as well as international coffee varieties), how we make the coffee (we brew our own coffee with the help of experts) and the process of delivering it. Getting a great tasting hot cuppa delivered on time – consistently day after day is the trick. Enjoying a good cup of coffee suited to your taste at your convenience on the go is one of the simple pleasures of life. We want to deliver that. For example, we realized that you don’t get the typical coffee stoppers / stirrers in India. Even Starbucks imports them from China. We didn’t want to start our service till we had that figured out. We are importing them from the U.S, till the time we find a partner who can custom manufacture these for us.”

The team behind this venture is united not only by their love for coffee but also by their experience in building and scaling start-ups. The founders are also the mastermind behind another successful start-up venture, an online education company SmartOn. SmartOn is recognized as one of the best edtech start-ups globally and part of the prestigious TechStars Accelerator program in 2014.

Response so far? “We are still in our early days. We are learning a lot from our customers, every day. The response we have so far is just amazing and super encouraging. We are very excited with the positive feedback and repeats we are getting from coffee lovers in Bangalore. The demand has been so overwhelming that we now serving 5 areas in Bangalore in a span of 4 weeks. We are working to stabilize and streamline our technology & processes to handle scale in the near future.” The positive response is evident when we look at some of the testimonials that their customers have written for them. People are already requesting them to add more places to their delivery list.

DropKaffe gives you not only coffee but the whole experience of getting the right cuppa! “We believe DropKaffe is much more than just coffee!”
Ready to get your coffee experience? Log onto DropKaffe and start ordering. Do stop by their facebook page for more updates.

A coffee for your thoughts ? Leave a comment and tell us what you think. Two random respondents will get a DropKaffe  gift card worth Rs 100 !!

Images Courtesy Of: DropKaffe