Fraganote launches 'Cutting Chai' fragrance with Dolly Chaiwala

New Delhi: Fraganote launched Cutting Chai, a new fragrance inspired by India's roadside tea culture, along with a digital campaign featuring internet personality Dolly Chaiwala. The fragrance combines notes of ginger, cardamom, brewed tea, and warm woods. Its packaging draws inspiration from vintage Hindi film posters, featuring bright red and yellow colours, a chai kettle, a tapri glass, and the line, "Chai bina chain kahan re." The launch film features Dolly Chaiwala, who became popular online after serving tea to Bill Gates. The campaign follows a fictional storyline where Fraganote Co-Founder and CEO Garima Kakkar and investor Arjun Vaidya "kidnap" Dolly in a Maruti Omni and bring him to a laboratory to create the new fragrance. The film uses references from Bollywood films and popular internet culture. The film opens with Fraganote founder Garima Kakkar and investor Arjun Vaidya getting Dolly kidnapped in a Maruti Omni, the unofficial vehicle of every Bollywood kidnapping. He wakes up in an abandoned lab bathed in red and yellow light, where the duo offers him a ransom for a top-secret mission: developing the chai perfume. What follows is Dolly building the fragrance in his signature theatrical style, dramatic background score and all. Arjun Vaidya channels Rajinikanth with "Kyun, hila dala na." Dolly delivers a dazed "Main kaun hun, main kahan hun," straight out of an Ekta Kapoor serial. Garima breaks into Govinda-style tears with "Itni khushi, itni khushi, mujhe aaj tak nahi hui." The film ends with co-founder Arjun Anand, playing the director, calling "CUT," as a spot boy mutters the internet's favourite punchline: "Sir, 50 rupay kaato inka, over acting ka." Watch the film here: "Chai is not a beverage in India; it is an emotion. We wanted to bottle that emotion, not a polished, exported version of it," said Garima Kakkar, Co-Founder and CEO, Fraganote. "The tapri, the kettle, the glass, the filmy dialogues. This is the India we grew up in. Cutting Chai is us refusing to be embarrassed about it." "Fragrance in India has always looked West for inspiration. Cutting Chai looks at the street corner in India instead," said Arjun Anand, Co-Founder, Fraganote. "We wrote the film with Cultr’s team like a 90s Bollywood kidnapping drama because that is the shared memory of an entire generation. When Dolly says yes to a script like this, you know you have made something the internet will adopt as its own." "This is what category creation looks like in Indian D2C," said Arjun Vaidya, V3 Ventures. "Fraganote took the effort to earn culture and break the clutter. A founder and brand willing to put itself in front of the camera, poke fun at itself, and still land a genuinely world-class product. That is rare and very cool. And, an added bonus is that I got to be a part of the ad." The campaign also features Arjun Vaidya, whose venture capital firm, V3 Ventures, invested in Fraganote's Series A round. Commenting on the campaign, Vaidya said, "This is what category creation looks like in Indian D2C. Fraganote took the effort to earn culture and break the clutter. A founder and brand willing to put itself in front of the camera, poke fun at itself, and still land a genuinely world-class product. That is rare and very cool. And, an added bonus is that I got to be a part of the ad."