From Ok-pop and Ok-dramas to Ok-toons and Ok-beauty, there’s a visual Korean cultural wave sweeping throughout Gen Z and millennials.
Korean road meals, an under-penetrated section up to now, has now joined the celebration and is discovering favour amongst younger Indians. And Bengaluru-based QSR (fast service restaurant) model goals to money in on this fervour.
Boba Bhai, which sells Korea-inspired quick meals and bubble tea, was based in 2023 by Dhruv Kohli. Its menu options daring, spicy, and tacky flavours that echo Korean meals tendencies, tailor-made to Indian tastes, paired with bubble tea, which is in style in trendy Korean cafés and road meals spots.
Kohli’s intention is to seize the vibe of Korea’s snacking tradition—vibrant, youthful, quick, and enjoyable.
“Everybody was watching Korean reveals and listening to Ok-pop. Nobody was providing a meals expertise that matched that pleasure. That’s the disconnect we wished to bridge,” he says.
In slightly below two years, Boba Bhai has grown to over 60 retailers throughout 9 Indian cities, serving greater than 1 lakh orders per 30 days.
The model’s menu options over 40 SKUs throughout bubble teas, chilly coffees, milkshakes, Korean-style burgers (veg and non-veg), and finger meals like fries, wings, and spring rolls.
It additionally presents ice lotions and desserts impressed by Korean flavours—with choices corresponding to strawberry milk, matcha, banana milk, and Korean melon, topped with parts corresponding to popping boba, mochi, and candy rice cake bits
Constructing a brand new format
Kohli isn’t new to the food-tech trade. Earlier than Boba Bhai, he had co-founded Geezy Meals, a digital kitchen aggregator working over 500 cloud kitchens throughout Australia, United Kingdom, and New Zealand. After almost twenty years in Australia, he exited the enterprise and returned to India in 2023, inspired by the altering client panorama within the nation.
“India’s meals panorama has developed dramatically. International flavours are not occasional indulgences—they’re a part of city consuming habits. Amongst them, Korean meals and aesthetics are rising quick,” he says.
Kohli spent months on-ground, attending Ok-pop festivals, Ok-drama fan occasions, and native pop-ups, to know the heart beat of the individuals and the cultural traction.
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Boba Bhai’s burger and tea
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“There have been 1000’s of attendees, some fluent in Korean, others making an attempt bubble tea for the primary time,” he recollects. “However when it got here to meals, there was no accessible, dependable model that served that urge for food.”
With a Rs 2 crore private funding and curiosity from traders, Kohil started testing the waters via weekend pop-ups in Bengaluru, promoting bubble tea and Korean snacks corresponding to spicy fried hen bites, tacky corn canines, and gochujang-seasoned fries.
Inspired by the response, he launched Boba Bhai’s first supply kitchens in metro neighbourhoods of Bengaluru, focusing on early adopters like city millennials and Gen Z customers.
“We didn’t begin with costly flagship shops—we centered on being agile. A delivery-first mannequin allow us to experiment with menu codecs, pricing, and buyer preferences with out taking over heavy capital danger,” Kohli notes.
This lean experimentation helped Boba Bhai increase a seed funding of Rs 12 crore from Subtrac Capital, International Development Capital, and choose angels. With this, the model expanded to Delhi-NCR and Mumbai, and progressively added dine-in retailers to its combine.
Immediately, the model operates 60 retailers throughout 9 cities, together with Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, and Hyderabad, and is on the market on supply platforms corresponding to Swiggy, Zomato, Blinkit, and Zepto.
Korean meals with a desi twist
Boba Bhai’s menu is impressed by Seoul’s daring and indulgent road meals tradition. As an alternative of sticking to conventional Korean dishes, the model is reinterpreting in style Korean road meals with Indian fillings corresponding to paneer and aloo tikki.
It has tailor-made its choices to go well with Indian tastes, underneath the steerage of Chef Vikram Chawla, previously with ITC Motels, who now leads the R&D staff at Boba Bhai.
For instance, Gochujang Paneer Burger, which blends Korean gochujang sauce with a paneer patty; Cheese Maggi Corn Canine, a twist on the Korean basic crammed with masala Maggi and cheese; Loaded Kimchi Fries, combining tangy kimchi with Indian masala fries and spicy mayo; and Ok-Fashion Rooster Wings, glazed in a Korea-inspired sweet-spicy sauce, seasoned to match Indian spice preferences.
The merchandise undergo trials and evaluations—they make it to the menu provided that buyer suggestions and repeat purchases assist that. This method has helped Boba Bhai clock a month-to-month quantity of over 1 lakh orders.
Boba Bhai’s merchandise are priced between Rs 119 and Rs 249. It clocks a mean order worth of Rs 400 on-line and Rs 330 in-store. About 55% of its income comes from drinks, primarily bubble teas in 45 flavours together with Taro Lava and Banana Milk. The remaining 45% comes from meals.
Tech-driven operations
To make sure consistency throughout its chain, Boba Bhai is counting on automation and programs.
Core components and preparations—corresponding to sauces, marinades, and prepped parts—are made in centralised cloud kitchens and commissaries, after which dispatched to every outlet. Last meeting and cooking (frying, grilling, beverage dishing out) are performed in every outlet utilizing standardised, semi-automated programs.
The retailers use IoT-enabled fryers, automated dispensers, and standardised cooking programs, corresponding to pre-set grills, portion management instruments, and digital recipe workflows—to minimise variation and guarantee product high quality throughout areas.
“Our machines know the precise temperature for frying hen or mixing syrups. It’s a precision-led scale,” says Kohli.
All this ensures high quality management, pace, scalability, and minimal employees coaching, he provides.
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Past shops
Earlier this yr, Boba Bhai got here out with a ready-to-drink canned bubble tea product. With a price ticket of Rs 99, a 6-month shelf life, and a spill-proof design, it was created with Gen Z in thoughts and designed for fast commerce.
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Launched first on , the product is now out there on and Instamart, in 70+ cities; one other 180 cities are within the pipeline. The model has invested Rs 1 crore within the ready-to-drink vertical, which contributes 10% of whole income. Kohli expects this to the touch 40% by FY26.
New SKUs—together with Korean chips and sauces, and smaller-sized bubble tea cans for common and trendy commerce—are underneath improvement.
Development and future potential
In FY25, Boba Bhai posted a internet income of Rs 30 crore—an enormous bounce from Rs 5 crore in FY24. Dine-in retailers contributed about 20% of this. The corporate now plans to transform all its 30 cloud kitchens into bodily QSRs; the objective is to achieve 100 retailers by the top of this fiscal yr.
Every of its retailers are company-owned and company-operated, with a mean capex of Rs 14 lakh and a 12-14 months breakeven interval.
In accordance with Customized Market Perception, the bubble tea market in India is projected to develop from a valuation of $450.1 million in 2024 to $930.1 million by 2033.
Boba Bhai competes with manufacturers corresponding to The Bubble Room, Bubble Bee, and Dr Bubbles within the beverage house, and Seoulmate and Koriko within the Korean-inspired meals class
What units the model aside isn’t simply the menu and recipe, says Kohli. “It’s additionally the programs and infrastructure. Our focus is on making culturally related codecs like bubble tea and Korean snacks accessible, constant, and scalable throughout cities.”
Boba Bhai lately expanded to Pune via a delivery-only cloud kitchen setup. Going ahead, it goals to deepen its presence in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, and Hyderabad, and department into Tier II cities corresponding to Jaipur and Ahmedabad. Concurrently, the model additionally plans to broaden its presence throughout Swiggy Instamart, Blinkit and Zepto.
Boba Bhai has a 4,000 sq. ft. manufacturing facility in Bengaluru. A brand new, bigger unit is being deliberate to assist each QSR and FMCG growth within the subsequent 5–7 years.
Wanting forward, the model expects a income of Rs 70 crore–Rs 100 crore in FY26, with fast commerce contributing as much as 40% of the topline.
Edited by Swetha Kannan
