Shivam Shahi : A Successful Entrepreneur Of F&B Industry Navigating His Firm Towards The Zenith Of Success | CEOInsights Vendor
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Shivam Shahi :  A Successful Entrepreneur Of F&B Industry Navigating His Firm Towards The Zenith Of Success

Shivam Shahi : A Successful Entrepreneur Of F&B Industry Navigating His Firm Towards The Zenith Of Success

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Shivam Shahi , Co-Founder

Shivam Shahi

Co-Founder

Venturing into the domain of entrepreneurship at an early age and through continuous learning as well as focusing on short-term goals to achieve bigger objectives, Sivam-Shahi is inexhaustibly engaged in crafting benevolent solutions to take his exclusive coffee brand out of India to a global platform. Ensuring the growth of individuals along with the organization, his objective has always been to build and move up the chain of operation by expansion, profits and sustainability. With a notion to empower people to realize their true strength and potential, Shivam aspires to become a more successful entrepreneur in the FnB industry by overcoming the challenges which this industry has faced so far.

Joining the team of CEO Insights in an exclusive interaction, Shivam Shahi shares his dreams and aspirations about navigating his firm - the Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters, towards the zenith of success.

Being the Co-Founder of one of India’s best specialty coffee roasters, what are the different roles that you have been undertaking at Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters?
I’m a very hands-on person and since we started as a very small team, I’ve had the opportunity to be actively engaged in all parts of the business of the years. Now, as the business head of a rapidly expanding company, my role is extremely dynamic and has evolved over the years. Broadly, I now look after the business operations and drive growth through unlocking new geographies and developing new revenue channels. The past year and a half has come with its own set of challenges for everyone but I have used these difficulties to push and explore my own boundaries by developing new projects.

With a vast experience of 5 plus years in the Tea Coffee Brands and Cocoa and in different verticals of industries, how does your experience help you out to chalk out business operation for your domain?
As the first movers in the Indian specialty coffee space, we’ve encountered several interesting opportunities and milestones along the evolution of the third wave of coffee. Today, our business model isn’t solely dependent on one supply or distribution chair, or a single business domain. While staying true to our aim of making the best Indian
coffee experiences come alive, we have adopted an omni-channel approach across D2C, B2B, and distribution networks. A well-informed combination choice of these three channels across all products and services balances our business economics very well.

Through these years, I realised that running a business successfully means need to see authenticity, quality, consistency and customer satisfaction with employee welfare. As a business, we have ensured to focus on economics and quality consistency in mind, by blindly chase growth numbers. To be say we grow our business exponentially from last five years. Our way to business is model, quality, agility and strong terms with a comfortable position in uncertain times when businesses are struggling to survive.

With an exciting coffee landscape prevailing in the country right now, our vision has always been to make the best specialty Indian coffee more accessible and desirable


What is the major challenge faced by you till now? How did you overcome it and what did you learn from it?
When COVID-19 struck last year, we had to abruptly shut operations with revenues dipping down to negligible levels for two weeks. During that time, we learned to be more accessible and honest about our operations with customers and employees. It was essential to ensure we did everything to ensure everyone felt confident in our safety measures adopted throughout the company. We manage our operations with transparency, with different business domains to scale up our business and started several projects, including international expansion with upgrades. To add we updated our procedures, safety protocols, we made our employees to get vaccinated and ensured the required assistance for them.

As for our products, we comprehended that coffee in general is very tough to brew at home, especially for our cafe customers. When the COVID-19 started, we realised this challenge faced by our customers and developed easy-to-brew coffee sachets Easy Pour and Cold Brew Bags, which hit a chord with Blue Tokai drinkers. Not only we were able to sustain and engage with our existing base but our D2C also business grew multi fold. We achieved better numbers as compared to our pre-COVID sales, which is not a norm in the industry.

In your professional journey so far, which are the milestones that
bestowed you with utmost satisfaction?
Our vision is to the best of Indian coffee to a global platform because it truly does represent some of the best coffee in the world. Over the past year we worked extremely hard to take the business global and it makes me very happy to say that we have recently launched our operations in Japan with a manufacturing facility in Tokyo, serving as a base for D2C business.

Achieving the milestone of introducing the brand to a country with a strong coffee culture during this pandemic was very challenging. But it was something we had always dreamt, and we pulled out all the stops to make this happen. The response and acceptability of the product so far has been great and it makes us very happy to have taken this first step in a long journey.

What is the future roadmap envisioned for Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters?
With an exciting coffee landscape prevailing in the country right now, our vision has always been to make the best specialty Indian coffee more accessible and desirable. Our customers are across a spectrum from those who are starting their specialty coffee journey to those who will self-identify as coffee nerds. One the one hand, our Easy Pours and Cold Brew Bags make it extremely convenient to make coffee at home without equipment, and on the other, our latest offering – The Taster’s Club - is an interactive product that indulges the customer in the world of specialty coffee.

Omni-channel presence, adding more neighbour hood coffee shops, implementing technology-focused solutions, and making our products more convenient to access and use will be the focus of the company for the next few years as business objectives. On the product- side, we have developed great relationships with partner farms and are working ever more closely with them to push the boundaries of coffee in India. This has really enabled us to consistently delight our customers with exciting flavours and experiences.

Shivam Shahi, Co-Founder, Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters
An engineer by education and a problem-solver by passion, Shivam Shahi hails from a small town in Eastern U.P. called Padrauna where he completed his schooling. He proceeded to achieve his B.Tech from National Institute of Technology, Karnataka, followed by an M.Sc. from the University of Alberta, Canada. After a brief stint as a research engineer in Canada, Shivam moved back to India to join the start-up ecosystem. With over 8 years of experience across operations, management, business development and design, Shivam is the co-founder leading the expansion of India’s leading specialty coffee company, Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters.

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