Looking at Your Dream Companies through a Chai Wala’s POV
Decoding Business Models in the Language of an Everyday Man
I met Ramesh on a Tuesday morning.
Not in a boardroom. Not at a startup conference. Not even on LinkedIn.
He was standing behind a small blue tea stall outside my college, fighting for his life against a kettle that seemed determined to boil over.
“Bhaiya, ek chai.”
“Adrak wali?”
“Normal.”
He looked at me for a second as if I had disappointed him personally.
“College ke ladke ho aur normal chai peete ho?”
I didn’t have an answer.
While he prepared my tea, I watched the little ecosystem around him.
A student wanted less sugar. Another wanted more milk. Someone was complaining about the price. Someone else had already taken his tea and disappeared without paying, apparently operating on a credit system that Ramesh had somehow agreed to.
And Ramesh knew all of them.
He knew who wanted extra sugar.
Who wanted less milk.
Who would pay later.
Who would come back after class.
Who was going to ask for one more biscuit after saying they weren’t hungry.
It was a tiny business.
But it was a business.
That got me thinking about something.
We spend so much time talking about our dream companies.
Google.
Microsoft.
Apple.
Amazon.
Tesla.
We know their valuations, their salaries, their offices and sometimes even the colour of the chairs in their cafeterias.
But what happens if you explain these companies to someone who doesn’t know anything about corporate jargon?
Someone like Ramesh.
So, while waiting for my chai, I asked him what he thought about some of these companies.
His answers were surprisingly simple.
And perhaps that’s the point.
Let’s start with Google.
To most of us, Google is a massive technology company with search engines, cloud computing, advertising, AI and enough products to make a first-year engineering student question his life choices.
To Ramesh, it was much simpler.
It is the thing people open whenever they don’t know something.
And that’s actually the business lesson.
Google’s success begins with utility.
You don’t use Google because its office is beautiful.
You use it because you have a problem.
You don’t know something.
You search it.
You need directions.
You search it.
You want to know whether your professor has cancelled class.
You search the group chat first, obviously, but eventually you end up somewhere on Google.
The business model may involve complicated advertising systems, data and technology.
But the basic value proposition is ridiculously simple:
“Help people find what they need”
Ramesh doesn’t need to know what a value proposition is.
He just needs to know whether people find value in what you’re selling.
Then there’s Amazon.
I explained it to Ramesh in the simplest way I could:
Imagine a shop where you can order almost anything and someone brings it to your house.
He didn’t look impressed.
Because from his perspective, that’s just a shop with delivery.
And honestly, he’s not wrong.
We call it e-commerce.
He would probably call it:
“Dukaan ghar pe bhej dene wala .”
That’s what makes entrepreneurship interesting.
The technology behind a business can be incredibly complicated while the problem it solves can be incredibly ordinary.
People don’t want to spend an hour travelling to buy toothpaste.
They don’t want to search through ten shops for a phone charger.
They want convenience.
Amazon essentially built an enormous machine around that simple human desire.
And that’s something every entrepreneur should understand:
People don’t buy technology. They buy solutions.
Nobody wakes up thinking, “Today I shall experience an innovative e-commerce ecosystem.”
They think:
“Bhai, toothpaste khatam ho gaya. Blinkit! kar de.”
Then comes Netflix.
This one is interesting because Netflix isn’t really selling movies.
It’s selling access.
You pay regularly and get a library of entertainment whenever you want it.
Ramesh actually gave me the perfect comparison.
A chai subscription.
Imagine paying him ₹300 at the beginning of the month and getting a fixed number of cups whenever you want.
Suddenly, Ramesh isn’t just selling tea.
He’s created recurring revenue.
That’s one of those business terms that sounds much more complicated than it actually is.
The idea is simple:
Instead of convincing the same customer to pay you again every single time, you create a system where they keep paying because they keep receiving value.
Netflix does it with entertainment.
Software companies do it with software.
Gyms do it with memberships.
And Ramesh could theoretically do it with chai.
The difference is scale.
The principle is almost identical.
Then we reach Apple.
This is where Ramesh became particularly interesting.
Because if you asked him why someone would spend a ridiculous amount of money on an iPhone when another phone can perform many of the same basic functions, his answer would probably be one word:
“Naam.” ( You probably know “Naam or Daam?”)
**Money Follows My Brother**
And he wouldn’t be entirely wrong.
Apple’s greatest product isn’t just the iPhone.
It’s the perception surrounding the iPhone.
Design.
Ecosystem.
Trust.
Status.
Familiarity.
Brand loyalty.
People aren’t simply paying for a device that makes calls and runs apps.
They’re paying for a particular experience and the confidence associated with the brand.
This is why branding matters.
A product can solve a problem.
A brand can make people want your particular solution.
Even Ramesh understands this.
His chai isn’t fundamentally different from the chai being sold twenty metres away.
But his regular customers know his taste.
They know him.
They know what they’re getting.
That’s a tiny version of brand loyalty.
And sometimes, business is simply about giving people a reason to choose you when there are ten other options available.
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Then I brought up Tesla.
Ramesh’s understanding of Tesla was probably the shortest business analysis I’ve ever heard.
Electric car.
No petrol.
Petrol expensive.
Done.
And once again, there’s an important lesson hidden inside that simplicity.
Innovation doesn’t always mean inventing something completely alien to humanity.
Cars already existed.
People already wanted cars.
Tesla entered an existing market and tried to change the way those cars were powered, designed and experienced.
The same principle appears everywhere in entrepreneurship.
You don’t necessarily need to invent something nobody has ever seen.
Sometimes you just need to look at something everybody already uses and ask:
“Why are we still doing it this way?”
That’s where a lot of innovation begins.
Not with a genius sitting under a lightbulb.
But with someone being slightly annoyed.
By now, I had started looking at Ramesh’s stall differently.
It was tiny,One kettle,A few jars,Some biscuits,Two benches,No website,No app,No investor.
No PowerPoint presentation with the word revolutionary written fourteen times.
And yet, every morning, people came back.
That’s when I realised something slightly embarrassing.
We often confuse size with success.
We see a company worth billions and immediately think:
That’s entrepreneurship.
But Ramesh’s little stall has almost every ingredient of a business.
He has suppliers.
He has costs.
He has competition.
He has pricing.
He has peak hours.
He has customer preferences.
He has repeat customers.
He has to maintain quality.
He has to make sure his customers don’t start going to the stall next door.
He even has something that many companies spend millions trying to achieve:
Customer Retention
The guy who bought chai yesterday comes back today.
And then tomorrow.
That’s not just a cup of tea.
That’s a business model.
The interesting part is that Ramesh doesn’t think about any of this in business-school terminology.
He isn’t sitting there calculating his Customer Acquisition Cost.
He’s not building a spreadsheet called Q4 Chai Growth Strategy.
He’s simply paying attention.
He notices what people want.
He notices what they complain about.
He notices what they buy.
He notices what makes them return.
And perhaps that’s what entrepreneurs are supposed to do in the first place.
Pay attention.
We often think entrepreneurship begins with an idea.
Maybe it actually begins with observation.
Look around.
Why are people frustrated?
What are they repeatedly buying?
What are they complaining about?
What takes too long?
What costs too much?
What could be easier?
Ramesh doesn’t call this market research.
He just calls it running his shop.
Before leaving, I asked him which company he would choose if he could own one.
He looked at his stall.
Then at the crowd.
Then at me.
“Apni chai ki.”
I laughed.
But the answer made sense.
Because from his perspective, he already had something every business wants.
People who come back.
And that might be a better definition of a successful business than any valuation could give us.
Google gives people answers.
Amazon gives people convenience.
Netflix gives people entertainment.
Apple gives people an experience.
Tesla tries to rethink transportation.
And Ramesh?
He gives people chai.
Different industries.
Different technologies.
Different scales.
Same fundamental game.
Find something people want. Give it to them well. And give them a reason to come back.
We give these ideas fancy names when we put them into business-school presentations.
Value proposition.
Customer retention.
Recurring revenue.
Brand positioning.
Market opportunity.
Innovation.
But strip away the jargon and entrepreneurship becomes surprisingly human.
Someone has a problem.
Someone else notices it.
Someone builds a solution.
People like it.
They pay for it.
And if you’re really good at what you do, they come back.
That’s it.
Maybe that’s why talking to an everyday businessman is sometimes more useful than reading another hundred-page business case.
Because while we’re busy trying to understand how billion-dollar companies work, Ramesh is standing outside a college gate every morning, running his little business with a kettle, a few cups and a surprisingly good understanding of people.
I finished my chai and got up to leave.
“Kitna hua?”
“₹10.”
I gave him ₹20.
He returned ₹10.
Then, almost casually, he said,
“Kal adrak wali try karna.”
And there it was.
No marketing campaign.
No advertisement.
No customer-acquisition strategy.
Just a tiny upsell.
I smiled.
“Kal dekhte hain.”
But we both knew I’d probably be back.
That’s business.
