Distraught and listless, Mavji Ahir, 25, was scrounging for a job in a small village in Kutch district.
Mavji of Ratnal village could hardly make ends meet with what he earned from running errands for retail shops. A friend then advised him to turn entrepreneur, but the young man did not have the resources to strike out on his own.
After much consternation, he went to Minister of State for Food and Civil Supplies Vasan Ahir, who belongs to the same village, seeking help. The Minister asked him to start a tea stall named after Chief Minister Narendra Modi, and arranged a small space on the Anjar-Bhuj highway for him to start business.
ADVERTISEMENT
After he launched the “Modi tea stall” three months ago, Mavji started making a killing within a week, pouring out 300 cups of tea every day. The tea stall became an instant hit not just at Ratnal but also in some 15 villages in Anjar taluka, says Trikam Ahir, son of Mr. Vasan Ahir.
He told The Hindu that people taking the highway stopped by for a cuppa that costs Rs. 5. “What made the stall work well was the quality of the tea …,” he said.
Mavji said, “I had no permanent job and barely managed to earn Rs. 4,000 a month, but now I am making a cool profit of Rs. 2,500 a day.”
ADVERTISEMENT
On the day he opened the tea stall, he served tea free to all his customers.
Mavji Ahir’s is not the only case. Scores of NaMo (acronym for Narendra Modi) tea stalls have come up across Ahmedabad.
The Chief Minister even launched his “Chai Pe Charcha” campaign recently from a tea stall, connecting with 1,000 centres in 300 cities across the country through digital technology.
It was a comment of the senior Congress leader Mani Shankar Aiyar about Mr. Modi’s humble beginnings as a tea boy that led to a BJP campaign surrounding the brew.