Pyali- The Perfect Cup

We've partnered with Catapooolt to showcase some of the best ventures from the 'Catapooolt ProductCzars' Challenge which aims to inspire & identify some of the best product based innovations - and focusing on providing them access to renowned product mentors, prototyping experts, product market-creation organizations, funding & media visibility.

Here is an insightful and candid conversation with Sarang Atri, Co-Founder, Pyali. You can also check out Pyali's Crowdfunding Campaign here.

What is the one sentence pitch of your venture?

The cup which heats your drink, to your temperature, so that you can enjoy it at your taste!

Tell us more about your team?

We are four classmates from college when we were engineering undergraduates. Even though our background ranges from renewable energy to nuclear science, we four have always been interested in inventing new innovative technologies that can be of interest to any person, and not just a niche market. As coffee and tea is revered around the globe, by inventing pyali we found that we were touching the very core of our beliefs.

Our 4 member team consists of Sarang Atri, who handles our sales and marketing, having worked in the same field and finds that being a chatterbox really helps in sales.

Akash Bhargava, who has has been interested in the startup culture since his school days, makes our supply management easy, while also taking part in product development.

The technical team is formed by the duo of Abhyant Rawat and Priyankar Das, who while holding engineering degrees in Nuclear Science, have found a passion for electronics & material science which helped us make our product to life. They are basically Victor Frankenstein & Igor.

How did you come up with the idea of your venture?

As any engineering graduate will know, one of the best way to complete your syllabus one day before the exam is a coffee binge on a group study session. This is where we found our passion for coffee & tea. Once we decided to establish a hardware start up after college, it wasn't a difficult decision to make digital kitchenware, like pyali, as we inherently wanted to improve a person's eating/drinking experience. We carry out this belief in our other products as well, such as the Beer Mug, which keeps your beer cool to your temperature.

What problem are you solving?

Suppose you're sitting in a cafe with your bff and talking about your old college days. In the midst of the amazing conversation, you realize that the coffee or tea you've been drinking has gone cold, or is at a temperature you don't like to drink it at. This is where Pyali comes in. It lets you set the temperature of your drink, with a range of 20 to 70 degrees, and it keeps the drink at that temperature, till the last sip, even if you take an hour to finish your drink.

How does it work?

Pyali lets you set the temperature of your drink, with a range of 20 to 70 degrees, and it keeps the drink at that temperature, till the last sip, even if you take an hour to finish your drink. Watch our video :

What is your target market?

Our target market are basically all the cafe's and hotels which serve tea or coffee, which fortunately for us are every one of them. We want to make eating and drinking to be a more enjoyable experience than before for the customers sitting in these establishments.

What is your competitive advantage?

Unlike some of the products in the market, Pyali has a higher temperature range, i.e. till 70 degrees, while many products offer a range of 45-50 degrees. This difference is basically the definition of Hot and Warm. So the question you can ask yourself is, whether you like to drink your coffee warm or HOT?

How do you plan to market your product? What are your customer acquisition strategies?

Initially we plan to market the product as organically as possible, with the help of social media, food bloggers etc. The crowdfunding campaign running on Catapooolt (www.catapooolt.com/pyali ) is part of our marketing strategy to get the word out of our product and also get some reviews. After this, we're planning to give out trial products to cafe and hotel owners so that they can see how pyali attracts the caffeine addicts we designed this product for. Also, pyali is available to order on our website : www.pyali.co

What is the revenue model of your venture? 

Our model is to sell Pyali to all the cafe's and hotels which serve tea or coffee, which fortunately for us are every one of them. With this, and our other products, we plan to sell products to dining establishments all over the country, so that everyone gets an upgrade in their eating and drinking experience. 

What sort of support and feedback are you looking from the community?

We want the community, everyone who likes our new take on tea and coffee drinking to support us on our crowdfunding campaign. We are offering amazing rewards to all our backers, and our main intention is to get a pyali in the hands of all of our backers. If that happens, the community will give us the review and hopefully the confidence we need to get our other products in the market as well.

We want the people to show us that they share our vision and they are as crazy as us in the coffee-tea-beer-food department. 

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You can also ask questions to Sarang about Pyali and his entrepreneurial journey.