– Ankita Khobragade (PGP 2017-19)
“As a part of our Term 5 elective e-Lab (Experience live action of business), my team and I started what we today call the TotoCha Cafe. As a part of the course, we are supposed to start and run a live venture for a span of 3 months with seed funding of INR 25,000 from CIIE, IIMA. My team and I decided that at the heart of our venture would be the product, Kombucha. It is a probiotic, fermented tea drink known worldwide for its unique and refreshing taste. One of my team members had apprenticed at a Kombucha brewery in the US and so we decided to produce it ourselves in our humble abode, Dorm 5. Our vision was to create a Kombucha culture, a sense of togetherness within the IIMA community. And so, we created our cafe as a place where people could hang out and bond over our wide range of flavoured Kombucha drinks (watermelon, Jaljeera to name a few) and shareable snacks.
Our team comprises of: Aditi Agarwal, Ankita Khobragade, Lalfakzuala Hnamte, Pratyush Verma, Preeti Berhguzar, Rajkumar Srivastava. (PGP 2 students of the 2017-19 batch)
Since TotoCha is a lot like a startup, we all made it a point to develop cross-functional skills to operate the cafe. Prior to setting up the cafe, we also catered for various events within the campus such as Garba Night, post-placement party etc. As you may know, Term 6 is about to commence in a few days. However, even though e-Lab has ended, we plan on continuing the TotoCha cafe and possibly pass it on to enthusiastic and dedicated juniors once we graduate from the institute.”
