Rage Coffee was founded in 2018 with an idea to fulfill the gap in the market as the consumers were willing to try and replicate the same taste of coffee at their homes that they had already tried in various cafes and the traditional brands were not fulfilling this demand. Fundamentally, it was a gap in convenience and a gap in affordability.

However, Rage never wanted to be a specialty coffee player that was targeting that niche segment of coffee drinkers and even consumers who call themselves aficionados, and connoisseurs of coffee as they were drinking very basic entry-level products. So there were many gaps in the market that the brand identified, and then holistically bought all of those together and created a solution through the direct-to-consumer distribution power.

“We knew something about the consumer that none of the other players knew and we went ahead and solved the bigger problems of the market. Other than looking at the low-hanging fruit of the market, we went ahead and solved problems related to a lot of proprietary products that we've built, including the machine that we use today,” explained Bharat Sethi, Founder, and CEO, Rage Coffee.

Omnichannel: The Best Way to Grow the Brand

Rage coffee enjoys a very unique positioning in the market.  However, since the beginning, Rage had plans to become an omnichannel brand as 95 percent of the FMCG market still exist offline for most of the categories.

“If you are building a large brand then omnichannel is the best way to grow the brand. Direct to the consumer is just the DNA. It's the data-driven mindset, the closeness that one wants to have with the customers,” he asserted.

“For us, entering the market through D2C was a planned strategy. I was very confident about when we should enter the offline market. The offline market operates very differently from the offline wholesale trade network which again operates very differently from the online market. There is no instant gratification,” he further added. 

At present, the ratio of online v/s offline revenue for the brand stands at 50:50.

Distribution Strategy

At present, the brand has four CFS, 7-8 super stockists, and 70 distributors across India. However, it has been adding 25-30 new distributors every month since the day Virat Kohli invested in the brand.

“I feel the market is absolutely ready for us. It has been almost three years building this network, so now we are ready to expand our network to 2,400 to 2,500 outlets. This includes modern trade, supermarkets, neighborhood stores, etc. Regional modern trade chains are our strategy, and we are generating a good healthy percentage of business from our offline channels, as well as from hyper-local channels, consumers, and online marketplaces; basically wherever our customers are present,” he said.

Marketing Strategy

The brand is investing heavily in social commerce and that is how it is driving the entire story. To acquire more customers, the brand is betting big on influencers.

“We like to partner with curators who are already our consumers, who are using our products and would like to generate content through them. It also helps in retaining our customers. Almost 35 percent of our customers every month are repeat customers,” he asserted.

Apart from this, the brand is also building its own community along with deploying other marketing techniques like emails, WhatsApp, etc, which actually helps in staying closer to the consumers.

Exploring NFTs and Metaverse

Recently, Rage Coffee penetrated into the manifolds of the blockchain bazaar by minting 10 Rage Coffee branded NFTs of a certain value. These NFTs were issued to 10 lucky winners as a part of their valentine’s month marketing campaign. 

Explaining it further, Sethi said, “For us, it was marketing, a mechanism to reach out to our audiences. We genuinely wanted the communication to result in something meaningful for them because there are a lot of talks about crypto and Metaverse and NFTs. But what was happening was no one really did not know what to do, so we kind of broke down and suddenly gave them free NFTs. So we opened the accounts and transferred those NFTs, then, gave them the knowledge about the same also.”

“We're also setting up shop in Metaverse right now. We will be launching a store in Metaverse to come closer to our consumers. We will be interacting with consumers in the Metaverse space to win their loyalty,” he further added.

Technology: The Backbone of the Brand

Technology is at the heart of whatever Rage does. It depends heavily upon analytics. The brand has generated its own tools for order management, inventory management, warehouse management, and production.

“The data really helps us make those decisions and be ahead of the curve,” he asserted.

Tier-II and Beyond: Capturing Bharat

At present 60 percent of the business for Rage Coffee comes from smaller cities.

“Capturing Tier II and beyond is a very big part of our strategy as almost 70 percent of our business in the offline wholesale industry comes from smaller cities and it's growing very fast. Also, we've taken very conscious steps to appeal to every kind of consumer and all the more so, specifically the consumer who's not had the opportunity to taste good coffee,” he explained.

Future Plans

In the next couple of months, the brand is planning to launch a range of new products, and going ahead, it is planning to spend most of its capital on expanding distribution and building the team.

Apart from this, the brand, which has grown 500 percent every year since its inception, is also planning to raise funds soon.

“By 2025, we are eyeing to be Rs 500 turnover brand,” he concluded.