How Sleepy Owl Coffee started

Ajai Thandi, Ashwajeet Singh, and Arman Sood founded Sleepy Owl in 2016, focused on a very specific coffee format that barely existed in India at the time: convenient, good-quality cold brew that people could make at home without any special equipment.

The problem they saw

Good coffee in India generally meant either instant coffee at home, which sacrificed flavour for convenience, or a proper cup made at a café, which required stepping out. There was very little in between for people who wanted a genuinely good cup at home without investing in brewing equipment or the reliable supply of quality beans that came with it. Cold brew, popular abroad, was practically unknown in Indian homes, and no one had made it simple to prepare.

What they sold first

Sleepy Owl's first product was cold brew coffee in convenient dip bags, designed so customers could brew a smooth, low-acid coffee at home simply by steeping the bag, without needing a machine or any brewing expertise. The format itself was the innovation as much as the coffee inside it, built around the idea that quality coffee should be no harder to make at home than tea.

The decisions that mattered

Selling directly to customers online let Sleepy Owl introduce an unfamiliar product format to India without needing retail buyers to first understand and stock something so new. It also let the company explain, through its own content, what cold brew was and why it tasted different from what most Indian coffee drinkers were used to.

The founders treated education as a core part of selling the product, since cold brew was not something most Indian consumers had ever heard of, let alone tried. Content about how to brew it, what made it different, and why it was worth trying did much of the early persuasion work that advertising alone could not.

Sleepy Owl expanded gradually into other coffee formats and products once cold brew had built a loyal following, using its identity as a coffee specialist rather than launching unrelated categories to chase quick growth.

What a small brand can take from this

Introducing an unfamiliar product to a market can work if you make trying it as easy as possible, and take the time to explain why it is worth trying at all.

A direct relationship with customers lets a brand educate its market rather than depending on a distributor or retailer to explain something new on its behalf.

Staying specialised in one product category while building genuine expertise in it can be a stronger long-term strategy than diversifying too early, before your core product has fully found its audience.

If you have a product worth explaining properly to your own customers, you can build the store for it with early access.

Varchas Stores is not affiliated with Sleepy Owl Coffee. This is an editorial story based on public reporting, written for founders who are starting out.