Abstract

India’s Food and Beverage (F&B) industry, valued at USD 334 billion in 2023, is the second-largest sector in its category, contributing nearly 3% to India’s GDP and employing over 8.5 million people (Sahu, 2024). Its rapid growth is fuelled by rising disposable incomes, urbanisation, and evolving consumer preferences among millennials and Gen Z, who seek a blend of convenience, health, and diverse culinary experiences. While a growing market opportunity exists, small scale cafés are often constrained by challenges such as customer retention, staffing, and unique branding and identity creation.

The aim of this project was to propose a data-backed tool for budding Café Entrepreneurs in the Indian Food Services market to maximize branding and identity curation on both physical and digital fronts in order to increase visibility and long-term market relevance. This was done by incorporating a mixed methods approach by conducting semi structured interviews with Café Entrepreneurs based out of Pune and Mumbai, and circulating a survey to understand café customer behaviour. Through an iterative solution-building approach that was incorporated, a platform containing a live chatbot, insights from customer surveys and a simulation was deemed to be the most suitable solution.

Solution

Our solution, ByteSize Branding, aims to empower café owners to develop a digital presence across four stages of their business:

• Ideation,
• Pre-launch,
• Recently Launched, and
• Established Business.

Any Café Entrepreneur wishing to use the platform would first have to go through an onboarding process that would require them to share details of their café such as café name, location, stage of business, aesthetic and price range.