Mumbai already has no shortage of cafés. The harder problem is giving people a reason to choose yours over the next one. drnk is trying to solve that by making the café itself part of the product.

Founded by Raj Thakkar and Aryan Gandhi, the Mumbai-based brand calls itself "a whole vibe" rather than a regular café, built around coffee, matcha and a Gen Z crowd. The founders were 19 and 21 when they launched drnk in 2023, according to Time Out Mumbai. The bigger idea sits beyond the menu: a place between home and work where young people can meet, hang out and stay late.

The story did not begin with a café. According to Aryan's LinkedIn, he started BlazeBlends in May 2021 as a home-run protein smoothie brand taking orders through Instagram, WhatsApp and subscriptions. In 2022, it expanded onto Zomato and Swiggy, while Aryan ran smoothie pop-ups across Bengaluru, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, Pune and Mumbai, building an offline community along the way.

In 2023, Aryan met Raj and the two launched cloud kitchens in Bandra and Andheri West. That experiment failed. Instead of giving up, they moved towards live pop-ups across Mumbai and began noticing something that would become central to drnk: people were not only interested in the drink, but also in the experience around it. ATLAS SkillTech University lists both founders as alumni, and one of its professors has written that drnk was born on campus and opened on the founders' graduation day.

The first physical drnk was a small outlet in Bandra West. Time Out Mumbai described it as tiny and noted the queues, product drops and viral buzz around it. That mattered because the founders were no longer only testing drinks. They were testing whether a small physical space could become the centre of a community. In TEP's reading, the queues were one of the clearest signs that the outlet was drawing demand beyond a simple takeaway sale. The next question was whether that attention could become a repeatable business.

In February 2025, drnk was named in the second cohort of WTFund, Nikhil Kamath's initiative for founders under 25. WTFund gives selected founders grants of up to ₹20 lakh, along with mentorship and ecosystem access, without taking equity. The amount drnk received has not been publicly disclosed. Coverage at the time described drnk as an affordable specialty beverage brand focused on community-driven experiences, with an emphasis on healthier and more sustainable options. By 2025, Aryan's LinkedIn timeline said the team was gearing up to launch its first flagship café. The funding came as the founders were building out the larger concept they had been testing since the early pop-ups.

In TEP's reading, the idea behind drnk is that a café can work as a third space: not home, not work, but a place in between where people meet, spend time, discover new drinks and feel part of a crowd. That changes how the business thinks about the physical store. The café is no longer just where a transaction happens, it becomes part of the product. Someone may first visit because of a drink, but the reason they return can be the music, the interiors, the people or simply having somewhere to go.

drnk's menu leans heavily into experimentation and nostalgia. Time Out Mumbai highlights protein pancakes and 18g protein lattes alongside drinks inspired by cakes, doughnuts and puddings, with a S'mores chocolate French toast among the more distinctive items. Outlook Traveller points to the matcha menu, including a birthday cake matcha served with a candle and a "hot girl matcha" pitched more like a night-out drink than traditional tea. These products are not only made to be consumed. They are made to be discovered, photographed and talked about. The drink creates the visit, the visual identity creates the share, and the space creates the reason to stay. In a crowded café market, being memorable can matter as much as being good.

There is another shift in drnk's customer behaviour. In a recent Hyperpure by Zomato feature on the founders, the line between cafés and bars was described as blurring: cafés traditionally owned mornings and bars owned nights, but drnk's biggest crowds arrive after 8 PM. That changes the economics of a physical space. If a café can draw customers in the morning, afternoon and late evening, the same real estate can serve more occasions through the day.

drnk Apartment, its second outlet in Andheri West, leans into this. Time Out Mumbai describes a New York loft-style space with hip-hop and R&B, sofa seating and a large peach-coloured light installation behind the bar, open from 11 AM to midnight. For drnk, the question is no longer just how many coffees it can sell. It is how much of its customers' time it can own.

At its core, drnk is a food and beverage business, but its format goes beyond a conventional café. What follows is TEP's reading of the model. Drinks create frequent reasons to visit. Food increases the size of each order. A physical space with a strong visual identity gives people a reason to stay longer. Pop-ups and community-led events introduce the brand to new audiences. The real opportunity is not one drink but a repeatable offline consumer experience that can eventually be copied across locations. That also changes what the founders have to optimise for. They are managing real estate, customer experience, staffing, operations, community and brand, not only recipes and ingredients.

In TEP's view, the move from a tiny Bandra outlet to a second location in Andheri West marks a different stage. Opening one store can prove customers want the concept. Opening several tests whether it can be repeated. The hardest part of drnk's next phase may not be getting people through the door. It may be keeping what made the first outlet interesting while the brand grows. Every new location needs real estate, hiring, training, supply chains, inventory management, kitchen operations and consistent service. A concept built on atmosphere and community is harder to copy-paste than a menu.

Pricing is another question. Early coverage described drnk as affordable, but Time Out Mumbai lists about ₹2,000 for two at Apartment, and The Unstumbled said the Bandra café is not exactly budget-friendly. That gap matters if the brand wants to stay accessible to Gen Z while paying for premium real estate. And there is a bigger question: can a community built around one neighbourhood in Mumbai travel to other cities?

The interesting thing about drnk is how the business evolved. A home-run protein smoothie business became a delivery brand, then cloud kitchens, which failed. The founders moved to pop-ups, then a tiny Bandra store, then a second café, with WTFund backing along the way. At every stage, they changed the format without dropping the underlying idea: people do not only want something to drink, they want somewhere to go. If drnk can turn that idea into a repeatable format across cities, it could become something much bigger than another Gen Z café.

The drink gets people through the door. The experience is what drnk is really trying to build.