Meet The Entrepreneurs Behind The Chai Company

The Chai Company mobile trailer serving in the Historic Third Ward. Photo by Lauren Hafeman on Nov. 6, 2026. During a late-night conversation in June 2025, brothers Chayank and Krishna Pawar discussed an idea: What if we start our own chai company in Milwaukee? The discussion ebbed from how young people seem to be leaving town to launch businesses in places like Chicago and flowed toward how there was a gap in Milwaukee s market for authentic Indian chai. Drawing on their own desi cultural roots and hoping to establish a Milwaukee-made business, they registered The Chai Company LLC an hour into their conversation. One month later, in a leap of faith — literally — they launched The Chai Company as a humble wooden pop-up cart at Masjid Al-Huda, a community mosque where they pray, serving chai sourced from India, matcha sourced from Japan and coffee sourced from Milwaukee. Today, they ve replaced the cart with an endearing green mobile trailer, have a growing fan base and remain dedicat