Market Sizing: Bengaluru's Daily Tea Consumption, In and Out of the Home

In a product manager interview at Swiggy, you are asked to estimate how many cups of tea people in Bengaluru drink on an ordinary day. Talk the interviewer through your approach, state every assumption you make, and arrive at a single number along with a sense of how confident you are in it. ```hint Split where the tea is drunk Tea brewed at home and tea bought from a stall, canteen or office pantry depend on different things. Estimate them separately, and remember that Bengaluru's hot-drink habits are not a copy of the national average. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Does "an ordinary day" mean a working weekday, or an average across the whole week including weekends and holidays? - Should the count include every cup, whether brewed at home, served in an office or sold at a stall or restaurant, or only cups bought outside the home? - Which boundary counts as Bengaluru: the municipal city or the wider metropolitan area, and should people who commute in or visit for the day be counted? - Does tea mean milky chai and black tea only, or also green, herbal and iced tea? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A clearly stated equation with a segmentation that reflects how this particular city drinks tea, including its strong coffee habit and its large workforce from other states - Separate reasoning for cups made at home and cups consumed at stalls, eateries and workplaces - Labeled assumptions with round numbers, and arithmetic that is easy to follow to one headline figure - At least one sanity check from an independent angle, such as the number of outlets selling tea or tea-leaf consumption per person - A range showing which assumption the estimate is most sensitive to ### Follow-up Questions - Which single assumption moves your answer the most, and how would you check it cheaply within a day? - How would the estimate change on a Sunday, or during the monsoon season? - What share of these cups could a food-delivery app realistically serve, and which customer group would you go after first?