A student in Gurugram who craved hot chocolate with her roommates went ahead and learnt to make her own mix. And make a business out of it
With an affordable price point, Tiggle makes quality hot chocolate more accesible to all
After a hectic day at work in 2019, Anuva Kakkar came back to her PG, craving a good cup of hot chocolate. She asked her flatmates to join in, but was surprised that none of them had tried it before. “Good hot chocolate is mostly available in high-end cafés, and freshers like us would have to burn a hole in our pockets to have it. Making it at home is a bad idea because a good quality premix is tough to find,” says Kakkar, 23. Identifying the gap in the market, she started reading about making hot chocolate from scratch and tasted cocoa from 40 farms before she hit gold in Tamil Nadu, and launched Tiggle.
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“Your idea always sounds like a billion-dollar one to you but it is important to have it validated—get real feedback,” Kakkar, who printed pamphlets, made three litres of hot chocolate, and stationed herself outside the DLF Phase-3 metro station in Gurugram. “I was embarrassed, nervous, and so afraid,” she remembers. But she was sold out in 52 minutes. “I remember the face of one person who patiently waited in the queue and by the time it was his turn, we had run out of it.”
Anuva Kakkar
A few days later, she partnered with a kiosk inside the metro station. She’d wake up at 5 am, make her stock, lug it to the kiosk, although plagued with tough questions like, how will I reach out to my target audience? How do I build trust? Whom do I target through ads? How much do I invest in marketing? “Getting our first set of customers was hard, but then it is a loop. Our sales went up three times in just our second month of operations. After we got the first set of customers, we started receiving traction from word of mouth.”
Kakkar’s age has worked in her favour, mostly. “There are some untold perks of starting early—you are allowed to make mistakes and learn from them. As a young entrepreneur, you find mentors from the same industry who don’t see you as competition. That’s what you need when you’re starting out—just stay curious and patient,” she adds.
About two months into operations, the pandemic, brought her journey to a halt but Kakkar didn’t stop. What has worked for Tiggle is that theirs is quality hot chocolate packaged in a millennial-friendly way, available at an affordable price. “We take our customers and community seriously, making them decision-makers. We shared jaggery hot chocolate mix [R329 for 10-cup pack] with a close community of 150 people and that was a hit. In December 2021, we launched vote.thethiggle.com, a voting platform that would indicate the next goal the team should work on. We use social media to the optimum,” says Kakkar for who, hot chocolate is an emotion, a medicinal boost and a happiness hamper. “My ideal hot chocolate is fresh, dark, and easy to make. It is something that can take me out of a bad mood, and calm me after a hectic day.”
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