Exclusive Interview | Abhinav Mathur, CEO & Managing Director at Kaapi Machines
/“Constantly try and learn to improve your products and services to get success ”
Editor: Tell us about your journey. How did it all start?
Kaapi Machines was founded in 2007, at a time when the café concept was just growing in India. The idea was to provide coffee businesses with the right equipment, training, and support to grow and thrive. The company has since grown, serves now many top café chains, hotels, and corporates, and is considered a market leader in the coffee equipment industry. With a strong regional infrastructure and local support for training and after-sales service, Kaapi Machines has an edge over competitors.
Editor: What do you think it takes to succeed in this industry?
The Coffee and F&B Equipment industry is a competitive space to operate in. There is no shortage of good products and choices for customers. In order to succeed, we believe it is important to completely understand our customer and their needs.
As Kaapi Machines, we have always believed in being a partner for our customers in their journey and hence we try and assist them right by providing coffee-related consulting and training, helping them work out their coffee concepts, choose the right equipment, installing and train their staff and finally ensure our after-sales and technical assistance is always available.
Our success has been a result of continuous innovation in products and services, building knowledge around coffee, and finally close work and empathy towards our customers.
Editor: What advice would you give to a young, aspiring entrepreneur?
My advice to any entrepreneur starting off their journey would be to:
Make sure they are passionate about their chosen domain, as they would spend a lot of time within the industry
Constantly try and learn to improve their products and services, since all markets are competitive and staying still would make you redundant
Not have financial success as the only parameter to measure achievement, since there are many challenges you face along the way and if the motivation is only financial, it does not provide the energy needed to succeed
Editor: What makes Kaapi machines so good?
At Kaapi, we believe in being partners in our customer's coffee business. We achieve this by:
Collaborating with the world-leading brands in the coffee equipment space
Having an extremely talented team of professionals, who are the best at what they do
Having strong values, which encourage collaboration, respect, and innovation, while still ensuring speed and efficiency in all our projects
Being the company with the largest customer support team in the country in our domain, customers never have to worry about any loss of business due to equipment issues
We support the café businesses by launching products that provide multiple advantages – newer brewing techniques, great design, the efficiency of operations, and automation.
Some popular new-age products include:
The Mod-Bar: An under-counter Espresso Machine, first installed at Araku Café, Bangalore
The Brood Nitro: A new age Nitro Coffee Brewer, present at a select few cafes
The Tone Touch: An innovation that automates the flow rate and water temperature to replicate the manual brews made by hand by Baristas
The Toddy Cold Brew System: Used by most top café chains in India
At Kaapi, we have also been working on an iOT project, and are ready with our own Kaapi-iOT system, which allows any customer in a retail space or office, to dispense coffee from a machine using just their phones. Millennials also do not like to carry cash around – so this system allows them to pay using their mobile wallets, pick up their favorite coffee from the station, and walk away!
Editor: What can we expect from Kaapi in the coming year?
While 2021 was all about the growth in the café segment, the year 2022, we believe – will see much more expansion in the RTD Coffee Market along with a return to offices and hence a strong coffee vending market.
Our own suggestion would be for coffee businesses to innovate more to attract consumers. There are many possibilities in coffee, right from sourcing to roasting to brewing and the more innovation we see, the more customers we as an industry will attract.
We are on a strong growth trajectory and we expect the coming year to deliver a record growth for us. With the number of new projects, products, and expansion plans from customers, it will be a year to look forward to.
The entire team is excited and raring to go!
Editor: Your favorite drink/dish?
During the summertime, I tend to prefer a cold brew coffee during the day, garnished with interesting condiments or even had as a simple brew.
Rest of the year, my favorite coffee brew would be a manual pour-over made using roasted coffee beans from some of the best estates in India!
