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The Dopest drink in town
I've launched a small business venture! It's called DOPE Kombucha - the best drink in town. Two of my friends and I have started a Kombucha beverage brand. In the past two months (April and May '23), we have made sales worth INR 13k to B2B customers. Our five retailers made a profit of INR 3.5k, while we made a profit of INR 2k. We also had a successful B2C launch on 22nd April '23, where we sold INR 9.2k worth of products in just two days.
Now, let me share how it all started. I met Purak while moving into a new flat. He happened to be leaving the exact room I was moving into, and we had a brief chat and exchanged numbers. Exactly seven days later, I had to leave that house due to a toxic roommate, and I found myself homeless on the 7th night. I reached out to Purak, hoping he could help me find a place to rent. He, along with his girlfriend Madhvi, generously sheltered me at their house for a week until I could find a new place. During this time, we became good friends and felt like family. One day, Madhvi brought us a bottle of something that initially tasted terrible, but we both ended up ordering it the next day because of how amazing it made us feel. We became addicted to Kombucha. After trying various Kombucha brands in India, we realized there was room for improvement in terms of all-natural, organic products. Purak and Madhvi started brewing Kombucha at home, initially as a hobby. Eventually, we discovered a third-party brewer who made the best and most authentic Kombucha we had ever tasted. However, they didn't know how to sell it, so we saw an opportunity and started planning to launch our own Kombucha brand - DOPE Kombucha. We spent a couple of months designing bottles, labels, fixing vendors, and iterating on our product. Finally, we launched at an event at the mall. Despite the event turning out to be a thrift-type flea market, we managed to sell 50% of our inventory, which was remarkable.
From our Launch where we were the odd one out
Currently, we are available at six retail outlets, with Jagdish Foods Pvt Ltd being our biggest customer. We have also entered the corporate market, with DOPE Kombucha available in the canteen of Collabera, an MNC. We are currently sold out at all our outlets and have placed our largest order yet, 100 liters, which we will bottle and sell door-to-door. We are also working on packaging so that we can scale and sell online.
From Jagdish Stores 👇🏽 to Small Pan Galla (Small Kiosk)
DOPE Kombucha is available from every type of vendor.
You can take a look at the website demo I made: https://bhargavmehta1311.wixsite.com/dope-kombucha.
We are currently bootstrapped, We haven't planned much ahead, but we aim to penetrate the market while keeping track of our economics for at least the next six months. I hope to learn valuable lessons from running a business, sort of like an MBA from the best institution on Earth - the market.
