SaralHai, this startup from Indore is a boon for the cafes, restaurants and customers

Varuna Bhambhani, founder of SaralHai, shares her experience with YourStory

Varuna says, "My father is a successful businessman and I have looked up to him since my childhood. The pragmatism he shows while handling the business is inspiring. I must say that he is the one who pushed me to follow my dreams and be my own boss. There is this one thing he has always been telling me — keep your mind focused. There are distractions in doing business too. Don't fall for all the offers that come your way. Don't get attracted to short-term candies."

With such precious life lessons learned from her father, today Varuna is the founder of SaralHai. She is trying to choose the path that has the greatest value proposition for SaralHai in the long run.

Varuna co-founded the company with Archit Jain and Devashish Aildasani on March 3, 2015.

According to Varuna, "Archit is even more of a SaralHai fanatic than I am; he dropped out of college to focus completely on the company. He is very energetic and devoted to building our brand in Indore and outside. I have blind faith in his capacity to work. He is a complete workaholic and can work for days on end without so much as taking a break. On the other hand, Devashish takes care of business development and finance management."

Although she didn’t have any formal work experience prior to SaralHai, 21-year-old Varuna has always taken a keen interest in markets, be it grocery shopping with her mother or her own shopping sprees.

What does SaralHai actually do?

SaralHai, like its name, makes it easier for individuals, households, and businesses to purchase fruits and vegetables without hassles and at a fair price.

Core product/service

They have introduced SaralHai cash cards that basically help all the stakeholders, whether the cafe/restaurant, cafe customer, or SaralHai itself.

The customers can buy food at partner outlets using the cash cards, which are made available to them at a certain discount. The cafe can then buy an equivalent amount of fruits/vegetables from SaralHai in place of the amount they receive in terms of cash cards from customers. It's basically a win-win situation for all. Customers get the discount. Cafes get new customers through indirect marketing. SaralHai gets the marginal profits.

Revenue growth and projection

They have an average monthly revenue of Rs 6.5 lakh. In the next six months, they plan to touch an average monthly revenue of Rs 15 lakh. They have been showing a minimum of 10 percent growth in revenues every month.

Monetisation strategy

According to Archit, the sector that they have been working in holds a good margin of 45-50 percent in B2B. He says, “As we increase the number of cafes and restaurants, these margins are sure to increase. Hence we aim to bring all the cafes/ restaurants under the same plate and play on monopoly."

Current team size

Besides the three co-founders, they have around 15-17 employees who have been working with them day and night to run SaralHai smoothly.

They also run internship programmes where they hire college students for marketing, sales, content writing, designing and more. After they go through the probation period, some of them are hired.