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A Cafe Where You Pay By The Hour, No Order Needed | Mauji India's first and largest time café

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About this episode

How a cafe in India charges ₹210 an hour instead of pushing you to order, and still makes money. A Startup India story about building a space first cafe when nobody was searching for one.

Vandita Purohit is the founder of Mauji The Time Cafe in Pune and Nagpur, where you check in on an app, pay for the time you sit, and beverages, snacks and wifi are included. You can bring your own food and they will hand you the cutlery. She is an engineer and a first generation entrepreneur who has run her own businesses since 2009, and this was her first time in hospitality. This is the Indian entrepreneur story behind it: a survey on a Pune high street where seventy percent of people said they were out to work or meet someone, not to eat, a 6,000 square foot bungalow taken over a week before the 2020 lockdown, and a landlord who offered her a way out.

In this episode of Chaos To Clarity she explains where the revenue actually comes from, why she calls the theme good chaos, why you take your shoes off at the door, the one kitchen rule she runs on, the consultant who said the place needed 32 staff when she runs it with 12, the fifteen cafes that opened within three minutes of her first Nagpur outlet, and the advice she would give herself in 2016.

Timecodes:

Connect with our Guest: Mauji The Time Cafe on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/maujitimecafe/

Vandita Purohit on LinkedIn: https://in.linkedin.com/in/vanditakediapurohit Website: https://www.maujicafe.com

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Hashtags: #podcast #indianpodcast #chaostoclarity #smallenterprisejourney #startupindia #indianentrepreneur #cafebusiness #timecafe #pune #nagpur #founderstory

Chapters

  1. 00:00Intro
  2. 01:20What a time cafe is
  3. 02:59The survey on a Pune high street
  4. 03:54Bring your own food, ₹210 an hour
  5. 09:16Shoes off and the good chaos theme
  6. 11:33How the first customers came
  7. 13:58Why it was called an anti cafe
  8. 15:25The one kitchen rule
  9. 17:40Mapping the customer journey before opening
  10. 23:06The customers who surprised her
  11. 31:04A 6,000 sq ft bungalow, a week before lockdown
  12. 39:09What kept her from walking away
  13. 43:13How a time cafe makes money
  14. 44:25Four hours and ten coffees
  15. 46:4732 staff or 12
  16. 48:26Does it work in smaller cities
  17. 52:39Can Mauji run without her
  18. 54:26100 locations in five years
  19. 56:40Advice to herself in 2016
  20. 1:01:35Her takeaway and what clarity means
  21. 1:03:54Outro