Indian entrepreneur stirs ‘chai’ into Silicon Valley coffee culture

San Francisco, May 29

In a Silicon Valley culture known for brilliant ideas boiling up in coffee shops, Gaurav Chawla is pouring his heart into chai.

Chawla was on a break from his job as an engineering manager at San Francisco-based cloud-computing star Salesforce when he began lamenting how tough it was to find a cup of chai as good as he makes it at home.

That frustration, and echoed complaints by other natives of India, where the blend of spiced tea and simmered milk is woven into daily lifestyles, prompted him to start tinkering.

(Follow The Tribune on Facebook; and Twitter @thetribunechd)

“I took a rice cooker apart and reconfigured it to make chai,” Chawla said. “It made good chai, and I realised this process could be automated.”

While his background is in software engineering, Chawla went to work developing a chai machine as simple to use as a coffee maker. He told of giving his second prototype a test run at Google offices, where it was used daily until it broke.

Another prototype got a workout in offices of sound and image specialty firm Dolby, according to Chawla. Feedback from those and other tests led to a first-generation chai machine to be funded by pre-orders at a freshly launched www.brewchime.com website at a temporarily discounted price of USD 249.

Chime machines aren’t slated to ship until March of next year. Chime machines brew one cup of chai at a time, using tea and spices pre-mixed in caps sold by the startup. “Essentially, you want to brew black tea and spices, add milk then bring it to a boil again,” Chawla said of the chai brewing process.

“Because you are adding milk, you can’t just let it sit by itself or you get a big mess — which I do almost every day.”

Chai has been growing in popularity in San Francisco and nearby Silicon Valley, with coffee shops large and small adding it to menus. — AFP