Every week, Anubhav Dubey, co-founder of the massively popular Chai Sutta Bar, receives a flood of DMs from fellow founders.
Most of them sound the same:
“My startup is failing. I don’t understand what went wrong. Please help!”
These messages come from entrepreneurs who have been building for 3–5 years, experienced, driven, but stuck. Despite their efforts, they feel like they’re going in circles. They seek clarity, guidance, and someone who has been through the fire.
Anubhav can’t reply to each message personally. But he recently shared a powerful set of lessons, drawn from his own journey, that every struggling founder should read. His insights aren’t theoretical. They come from someone who’s built a national brand from scratch, one cup of chai at a time.
Here are his 5 hard-hitting pieces of advice:
1. You Might Be Solving the Wrong Problem
Many startups fail not because of bad execution, but because they’re focused on problems that don’t truly matter. Anubhav urges founders to ask themselves:
“Is this problem really making someone’s life difficult, or is it just a minor inconvenience?”
Real businesses are built on real pain points. Unless your product or service makes someone’s life meaningfully better, it’s going to be an uphill battle for attention, relevance, and revenue.
2. Stop Copying. Start Understanding Your Own Market
It’s tempting to look at successful startups and replicate their playbook. But as Anubhav bluntly puts it:
“What worked for them won’t necessarily work for you.”
Your market, your customers, and your circumstances are unique. Blind imitation will only take you so far. The real growth begins when you stop looking sideways and start listening to your own users.
3. Don’t Burn Money on the Wrong Things
Fancy offices. Costly tools. Unnecessary hiring. These things feel like progress, but they’re not. Anubhav’s advice is simple and surgical:
“Focus every rupee on getting your first 100 paying customers.”
Early-stage businesses need resourcefulness, not extravagance. Until your revenue engine is working, every rupee spent should be directly linked to growth.
4. Don’t Compete to Be Cheap, Compete to Add Value
In the race to acquire customers, many founders think lower prices are the answer. But that’s a trap. Anubhav cautions:
“Excessive lowering of prices will kill your business.”
Instead of trying to be the cheapest, focus on being the most valuable. Find your differentiator. Stand for something. And build a brand that people are happy to pay for, not one they’ll abandon for the next discount.
5. One Bad Month Is Not the End of Your Business
This is perhaps the most emotional and vital lesson of all. In Anubhav’s words:
“One bad month, one client loss, one investor saying no and you think it’s all over. But this is what business is.”
Resilience isn’t a side skill, it’s core to being a founder. Entrepreneurship will test you constantly. The people who stay in the game, who refuse to give up when it gets hard, those are the ones who build enduring companies.
“Giving up is easy. Staying in the game is what makes you a founder.”
You Are Not Alone
Anubhav Dubey knows what it’s like to be at rock bottom. He’s seen rejection, doubt, and failure, but he kept going. Today, Chai Sutta Bar is one of India’s most recognized QSR brands, and his journey continues to inspire thousands of entrepreneurs across the country.
If you’re a founder feeling lost, stuck, or on the verge of giving up, you’re not alone. Read these five truths again. Share them with someone who needs to hear them. And most importantly, remember: You don’t have to build a perfect business. But you do have to stay in the game.
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