Let’s make brewing authentic chai simple and elegant

Hello world! Our first blog post here on Medium and, today, we launched our pre-launch website (small wins!). It’s been two years in the making, and I think now is where we truly begin. I’m excited that our official launch day is coming soon, but before that, I wanted to tell you more about me and…well why Chime? Why chai?

Why did I start Camellia Labs?

I have worked at a number of Silicon Valley companies since 1999 including WebLogic, BEA, and Salesforce. It’s been an incredible ride and I’ve have been inspired by the creativity, drive and talent around me. Everyday, at every company I worked at, I witnessed a small group of people (us) change the lives of millions of people with the products we built. I want to continue this theme of changing people’s lives, this time, on my own, with a problem close to me and my life experience. After all, you only live once, right? (ok maybe a few times if you believe it) but this lifetime you have now, is the only one I know, I want to make it count! With this inspiration, I took my first step — I took a sabbatical from Salesforce to reflect, explore and discover the possibilities of living out this philosophy. The filter for my decision making was — “What do I do everyday that I care about, that I can change, and that can lead to a positive change in the world?”

Why Chai?

When I thought about the answer to that question, many day-to-day things came to mind. I love to eat, travel, wear good clothes, sleep. Ideas around food, transportation, shelter, clothing came to mind. What else do I do everyday? I make chai…so, chai ended up on my idea list. Making chai brings me joy, it is something I care about, it’s a ritual in my life. At times, actually, to be honest, often, it also brings me frustration. Milk boils over and creates a mess, my ritual breaks, and I end up spending time scraping a burnt pot or scrubbing the stove rather than having a joyful experience making and drinking this familial and social drink. The more I thought about it, the more it became clear to me why chai deserved my time and attention.

Reflecting on my childhood, chai was a central part in my family life and in broader South Asian culture. The act of making chai is woven into our daily lives:

• When someone wakes up, the first thing they do is make their cup of chai.
• Whenever guests came unannounced (yes, they did that in those days), the first thing my family would offer is chai.
• Daily events and food was punctuated by cups of chai.
• If you were feeling bored, you would make chai.
• If you felt tired you make chai.
• If you started on a big project, the first thing you would do is make a cup of chai.
• When friends went camping together, the first thing everyone asked was, “Did you pack all the equipment and ingredients to make chai?”

This repeated pattern, in my everyday life and in the lives of my friends and family, proved to me that a lot of people actually care about chai, not just me! Chai is a part of our lives, it has meaning and a purpose. It served as a means to bring people together, to bring calm to a stressful situation, to accent meals, to motivate the start of tasks. It was woven in our actions, chai is and was important.

What impact do I want to have?

When I moved to the US, I was thrown into the coffee culture. The amount of attention given to places and equipment of making coffee felt and continues to feel endless. Cafes improved the everyday coffee experience but so did the umpteen number of machines and equipment to make a cup of coffee effortless and convenient.

Chai, on the other hand, needed some love. The user experience for an everyday chai drinker, if you consider loose leaf tea, has not changed. There have been shortcuts of making tea by tea bags, the microwave and instant tea pouches. However, for an authentic cup of chai, which involves loose leaf tea, milk that is pre-simmered and fresh spices — you are left with a hand-made process — boiling the milk, adding the tea, cutting up the spices and going through a simmer process…standing by the stove, hoping the tea won’t over-boil and spill over if you step away to grab your phone.

Making authentic chai, is a lot of work. Chime, is an attempt to address this inconvenience. I wanted to work for the chai lovers around the world and want to make this daily experience in their life, not just easy, but delightful. Chime, is the first step in that direction. I am on a mission to make this process simple for everyone who loves chai and wants to experience this wonderful drink without boil overs and messy pots.

What inspires me?

Some of my most admired companies, are probably also some of your most admired companies — Dropbox, Apple, Google, they are what they are because of the talented, creative, thoughtful people behind these products — all of these leaders are my inspiration. Simplicity requires hard work, focus and a maniacal dedication to making someone’s life easier. When a complicated process is replaced with an easy experience, the user shouldn’t have to think, they should only experience the product with delight and joy. Simplicity is a result of hard work and the creativity of a complementary and innovative team. Simplicity doesn’t imply that the process to simplicity, itself was easy. In fact, anyone can make a complicated solution to solve a problem, to make something dead simple requires ingenuity, hard work and ability to think from your customer’s perspective — having empathy is paramount. This is what we strive for everyday.

I would like to end with the ten principles for good design that we have tried to follow by Dieter Rams.

1. Good design is innovative
2. Good design makes a product useful
3. Good design is aesthetic
4. Good design makes the product understandable
5. Good design is unobtrusive
6. Good design is honest
7. Good design is long lasting
8. Good design is thorough down to the last detail
9. Good design is environmentally friendly
10. Good design is as little design as possible

Join us in simplifying the brewing process for authentic chai at BrewChime.com and follow us on facebook, twitter and instagram.