Nitin Saluja, the co-founder of Chaayos, appeared in a podcast with actor Chitrangada Singh, where he described his journey from the launch of a store to building up millionaire chai wala empire. Describing the hurdles he encountered he said that he initially worked as the store manager for a year and even cleaned tables to understand the core of the business.
“I ran the store as the store manager, the order taker, the inventory manager, everything that is done by a store manager," Nitin Saluja can be heard saying in the 34-minute 10-second video of The Rockford Circle Season 2.
He added, "I did that from 8:00 am till 11:00 pm….for a year and that's how I learned the business." He further informed that he used to talk to customers and take orders which helped him understand customers' delight and frustration.
The ground-level experience taught him management skills. It was through customer engagement he learnt that not every chai drinker is a potential customer.
“Only if my daughter (or the team’s children) can eat something at Chaayos every day, only then we can serve it in the store,” Nitin Saluja said.
Detailing the path to building the ₹2051-crore brand, Nitin Saluja said that he personally cleaned tables to ensure a neat and fresh environment for customers. Chaayos co-founder said he learnt “how to literally nicely clean tables for a cafe to smell really nice.”
While many dream of a job in the US, Nitin Saluja left his US job to launch a startup business called Chaayos. He used a portion of his savings to set up the first café in Gurugram in 2012. Nitin Saluja and his wife had come up with the idea of starting a chai business for which he quit his job and moved back to India. To his surprise, his father was not convinced by his son's decision, but Nitin Saluja was determined to make it a success story.
Nitin Saluja's early life
After completing mechanical engineering at IIT Bombay, Nitin Saluja started working as a corporate management consultant for one of America's big firms.
