Indian Chai Stirred Into Silicon Valley Coffee Culture
San Francisco (AFP) - In a Silicon Valley culture known for brilliant ideas boiling up in coffee shops, Gaurav Chawla is pouring his heart into chai. Chawla was on a break from his job as an engineering manager at San Francisco-based cloud-computing star Salesforce when he began lamenting how tough it was to find a cup of chai as good as he makes it at home.
That frustration, and echoed complaints by other natives of India, where the blend of spiced tea and simmered milk is woven into daily lifestyles, prompted him to start tinkering.
"I took a rice cooker apart and reconfigured it to make chai," Chawla told AFP.
"It made good chai, and I realized this process could be automated."
While his background is in software engineering, Chawla went to work developing a chai machine as ...