Coffee Cooker goes IIMA Entrepreneurship Fair 2010

Any great innovation needs support and guidance from the venture capitalists to convert itself into a successful business opportunity. Coffee cooker being an innovation from the bottom of the pyramid needs it even more because it needs support to come into mainstream markets from the rural areas that it is currently catering to. Continuing on this thought, Coffee Cooker goes today to meet its future stake holders at IIMA’s Entrepreneurship Fair. The Entrepreneurship Fair 2010 is a grand platform to bring together budding entrepreneurs from across the nation and some of the most recent start-up successes in India from diverse domains and background. 

This platform would provide insights to Coffee Cooker as to how it can turn itself into a successful business venture. By interacting with people who have already face the challenges of converting an idea to an entity which can vouch profits. And since there are students coming from across India, it would be able to gain insights on the marketing approach being adopted.

Coffee Cooker would be back with the insights that it has gained and the suggestions that were proffered to it at the fair. Hope it meets all its admirers over there.

What's Coffee Cooker All about???

Conventionally, the pressure cookers have been used for making food only. However, Rozadeen (46) has modified the ordinary cooker to convert it into an espresso/cappuccino coffee making machine. The modified cooker is used to boil water and generate steam. Through a long delivery pipe having a regulator, high pressure steam is used to make frothy, tasty coffee.

The Coffee Cooker

The innovation is a pressure cooker modified to incorporate a copper delivery pipe on its lid to transfer the steam generated inside to a container outside. Fabricated from locally available material, this coffee cooker consists of an ordinary pressure cooker fitted with a copper pipe, a pressure releasing valve actuated by moving a lever (screw driver originally used). The copper pipe along with valve has been fitted on the top of lid by gas welding. Water is heated in the cooker. Once sufficient steam pressure is reached, it is released by moving the lever upwards. The delivery tip of the copper pipe has been constricted to create more pressure at the point of release of steam. The safety valve below the handle and the whistle has not been touched. Rozadeen has named it as ‘JP Ustad coffee cooker’. The cost of coffee cooker depends upon its size. A new 10 litre capacity cooker costs Rs. 2000 while a modified old one costs Rs. 750. Similarly a new 5 litre cooker costs Rs 1000 and an old one Rs. 500. If someone brings his own cooker, he does the modifications in only Rs. 250. This modification can be done in any size of pressure cooker. There are other coffee makers available but in this case the novelty lies in generating the steam in pressure cooker and directing it through a delivery pipe into a jug containing coffee powder, milk and sugar. NIF has filed a patent in his name for the coffee cooker.

Feedback was collected from many tea stall owners who had been using this cooker for years. Most of them said that it has increased their clientele by drawing in the people who prefer coffee over tea. The cooker is economical and affordable. The coffee cup is sold for Rs 6-10 depending upon the size of the cup. The taste of the coffee is also different than that from an electric espresso machine. It feels and tastes soft and frothy more like a cappuccino than an espresso.