What are the requirements of being a Cartridge Café franchisee?
We are looking for people who are excited about this business opportunity, and committed to dedicating time and effort to make it successful. While basic knowledge of computers is desirable, we do not require you to possess any computer or printer expertise. Our offerings are aimed both at consumers as well as businesses. You need to appreciate customer service, think like a retailer and also have the competence to build relationship with business customers. The franchisee should be willing to invest personal time and energy to help the business grow.

What is the Cartridge Café franchise agreement, and how long is it valid?
The franchise agreement gives access to our technology and equipment, training and development programs, brand usage as per guidelines, support and demand generation programs. This legal document establishes the key responsibilities for both the Franchisee and Cartridge Café, and governs the relationship. It has designed in a simple format keeping in mind, a person with no legal knowledge. The contract is valid for an initial period of 5 years, and renewable on mutual agreement. The franchisee cannot run the business and/or use the equipment without a valid contract.

What is the minimum financial requirement of being a Franchisee?
The Unit Franchise program starts at Rs. 500,000 (five lacs), and we also offer an advanced franchise option of upto Rs. 1,000,000 (ten lacs). The Master Franchisee program requires an initial investment of Rs. 3,600,000 (thirty six lacs). You also require working capital for inventory and monthly expenses, as per the detailed financial sheets available. Other applicable taxes like VAT and service taxes are additional. Please refer our detailed financial sheet for the same.

What are the types of Franchise options offered?
We offer both a Master Franchise and Unit Franchise models of Franchise. The role of Master Franchisee (MF) is for retail development and Unit Franchisee (UF) is to offer refilling service through their retail stores. The UF can engage either as a Silver, Gold, Platinum or Solitaire Partner. The Solitaire partner is a full service shop-in-shop format with toner refilling service too. The other three are only for ink-refilling business.

Can I open at more than one location?
Yes! The Cartridge Café franchise model is scalable for multiple stores. It depends on the ability of the franchisee to invest in multiple stores, and more importantly build a team to run them. We also propose a model to take our Solitaire format as the centre of the strategy, and invest Silver/Gold formats to extend the retail reach in a hub and spoke model. This provides optimized investment model to the Franchisee for multiple stores.

What markets are available for new stores?
We plan to appoint franchisees in all the key retail locations in the top cities in India. The locations will be decided in a way, as to avoid any two of them being very close to each other; i.e. serving the same customer catchment area, unless justified by the business volume. This is to take care of the franchisee profitability. Each store location is proposed by the franchisee and approved at the sole discretion of Cartridge Café. You can take the first mover advantage, and join quickly to set-up in the most profitable locations.

Why should we do business with Cartridge Cafe?
Cartridge Café is committed to providing the most professionally run refilling business in India, and to be the catalyst in organizing this large market.

Our model offers global standards in technology and retail management at pricing, suited for the Indian market. This enables the franchisees to attain high returns on investments, and recover the initial investment in less than 24 months.

The spirit of our company defines the way we conduct business. “To exhibit the passion to succeed through partnering, actively contribute towards a greener earth while retaining unflinching integrity on deliverance.”

What is the royalty that I pay to the company thereafter?
There is no royalty to be paid on a monthly basis. Unit Franchisees have an initial period of five years for their franchise. After the end of first year they need to pay a yearly maintenance and training charge of 10-15% of the franchise cost.

Master Franchisees get an initial license to appoint 30 unit franchisees, after which they need to pay 50% of the prevailing franchisee fee as a step license to appoint another 30 unit franchisees.

Who chooses the retail location for the Store?
We seek high visibility, high traffic and high footfall retail locations. The location should be convenient for consumers to access. The stores should have a wide frontage (greater than 10 feet), with high quality and well-maintained fixtures. The frontage should provide clear visibility of the merchandise inside. While selling to institutional customers could be a significant component of your revenue initially, the long-term foundation of our business is based on retail. And a good location is everything in retail. The franchisee will propose the site which will be approved by Cartridge Café, if found suitable.

Who would be responsible for the advertisement & promotion?
Cartridge Café is responsible for building the brand on a national basis, both for the consumer and institutional market. This will involve activation programs, PR, advertising and direct sales effort to institutional customers. This efforts needs to be complimented by the franchisee to develop demand for their particular store. All promotions and marketing communication related to the franchise business will need to be approved by Cartridge Café.

Do you offer training and technical support?
We offer a comprehensive training program aimed to help you start the business. The training program helps you understand the fundamentals of cartridge technology, operating the refilling equipment, refilling of various cartridges, and aspects of the retail store and business operations. We offer cartridge refilling equipment technical support, from Monday to Friday from 9:30 a.m. – 6 p.m.

Where are you located?
We are headquartered at Bangalore, and have a regional headquarters in Delhi. The Mumbai regional office is opening shortly.

Why use refilled cartridges?
Refilled cartridges offer a cost savings of more than 50% to consumers and businesses. It offers a quality of print and performance similar to an OEM cartridge, if refilled using our process and automated machines.

Secondly, it helps to reduce the environmental impact by preventing fewer cartridges to be recycled that end up in landfills. Most cartridges can be refilled 7-11 times easily. The benefit of this is immense as they may take hundreds of years to decompose.

Thirdly, it provides an alternative choice to the consumer to buy services and consumables, and not limit it to only the OEM.

Do I need an ink-refilling machine or can I refill manually using syringes?
Refilling through syringes offers poor and inconsistent quality of printing. One may also need to drill holes in the cartridge to refill the ink. Cartridge Café is correcting both these issues using automated machines. The machines use a process similar to the one being used by OEMs to provide similar quality to printing. We also provide ‘Tamper Proof’ refilling to most cartridges that does not require any holes to be drilled.

Are there any differences between the various ink refilling machines being offered in the market?
Yes! Some ink-refilling machines still use an old technology that requires drilling and injecting the ink through a syringe. Hence, they may alter and/or damage the cartridges. This reduces printing life of cartridges as well as limits the amount of times that a cartridge can be refilled.

The correct way is to refill cartridges is under vacuum, which provides ‘Tamper Proof’ refilling. This technology is used at Cartridge Café.

What are the most important factors that a professional refilling machine should possess?
1) Provide ‘Tamper Proof’ refilling (No holes and syringe process).;
2) Automatic and pre-programmed for various cartridges.;
3) Ability to cater to future cartridges.;
4) Hold multiple inks to minimize switching while serving the customer.;
5) Ability to refill more than one cartridge simultaneously.;
7) Comprehensive user manual and training.;
8) Quality after-sales service and support.

What happens when a new cartridge is introduced in the market?
Printing industry is fast evolving with many new printers introduced every year. Our refilling machine uses modular design that can be upgraded at a negligible cost to refill future cartridges.

How many times can a cartridge be refilled?
Most cartridges can be refilled up to 7-11 times, which depends on three key factors.

The first factor is the usage environment, the quality of the paper used, and the working state of the printer.

The second factor is the time of refilling, which needs to be before the ink dries up fully, and clogs the micro-holes that dispense the ink. Hence, the cartridge needs to be refilled as soon as the warning for low ink is received from the printer.

The third factor is the equipment (automated or not), process (‘Tamper Proof’ or drill hole) and the quality of ink used. Cartridge Café ensures the best in the third factor to ensure that consumers get the most out of their cartridge.

Why aren’t more consumers refilling their cartridges today?
A very small percentage of users know that the cartridges can be refilled. There has been no awareness created on this opportunity to the consumers.

Furthermore, current refilling industry is not organized, and consumers have had a very poor experience in refilling their cartridges. This has been used by OEMs to create fear about refilling in the market.

As recycling is a fairly new service, and it is the responsibility of the recycling industry to educate the users that they can save over 50% and still get the quality of an ‘OEM cartridge’.

Do I need to switch ink types while refilling?
Our refilling machine can host 5-12 inks at one time. Hence, the need to switch inks is seldom, while providing the service to the consumer.

What is the competition?
The organized refilling industry is just starting. Current market is not organized, and offers poor quality of refilling and consumer experience. Most of them use syringes to refill cartridges. On the other hand OEM cartridges are available at a very high price.

This creates an opportunity for Cartridge Café to be a leading brand in the area. Other players have launched recently. However, most of them have not got the model right for India. Some offer perceived international quality at dollar royalty for earning in rupees, making profitability a distance dream. Other local companies do not offer the quality or the brand to build the market at a national level, thereby compromising on the long-term viability of the business.

This makes our business proposition much stronger, as we offer a great brand and superior technology at Indian pricing. Hence, we truly do not have a competing offering in the market today.

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