We are opening a store in Tokyo. Its name is Kanhaji. It is a curated grocery and lifestyle experience — a store designed around a small but considered assortment of food, pantry essentials, fresh produce, baked goods, and lifestyle products. We will open later this year, and we are writing today to introduce it.
Kanhaji is the second of Shyama Corporation's consumer ventures, after the announcement of Indo Zaika earlier this month. The two businesses share a common philosophy: build something serious enough to be worth a customer's repeated visits, and do not compromise the things that make it serious.
The Kanhaji shelf — smaller than a supermarket, deeper than a convenience store, edited with the care of an independent grocer.
The concept
Kanhaji is built around a single idea: the curated grocery, done at Japanese standards. The store occupies a footprint smaller than a supermarket and larger than a convenience store. The assortment is a fraction of what a supermarket would carry, chosen by buyers who treat the shelf as the most important product of the business.
Within that footprint, you will find Indian pantry essentials of a quality not currently easy to source in Tokyo — direct-from-producer spices, single-origin teas, regional rice varieties, dairy from named Indian farms. Alongside these, you will find Japanese pantry staples of the same care — small-batch soy, single-estate miso, artisan vinegars. Fresh produce, baked goods, and a thoughtfully chosen lifestyle assortment complete the store.
The thread connecting these categories is the buyer's standard. Every product on the Kanhaji shelf has earned its place through the same test: would we, as a household, return for this product? The discipline of that single test is the discipline of the whole store.
Every product on the Kanhaji shelf has earned its place through the same test: would we, as a household, return for it?
What "premium grocery" means to us
We want to be precise about the word "premium" because it is often used to mean "expensive." That is not what we mean.
By premium we mean a store where the quality of every interaction — the produce in the basket, the bread from the oven, the conversation with the associate, the cleanliness of the floor, the way you are greeted — adds up to an experience worth returning for. The price reflects what it costs to deliver that experience. We are not trying to be the cheapest store in Tokyo. We are trying to be the store that earns the customer's third, fourth, and fortieth visit.
Some of the products will be priced above the supermarket comparable; some, the everyday staples we source at scale, will be priced at parity. Either way, the value proposition is the same: a curated assortment, a store that is calm to be in, and a standard the customer can rely on without thinking about it.
Fresh produce at Kanhaji — delivered daily, inspected before facing, faced before opening.
What you will find
Some specifics on what the Kanhaji assortment will include at launch:
Fresh produce. Daily delivery from Japanese growers we have selected for quality. Seasonal rotations weekly. Provenance information on every item.
Bakery. A small in-store bakery operation producing fresh bread daily, alongside a thoughtfully chosen selection of pastries and biscuits from artisan Japanese and European producers.
Indian pantry. Direct-from-producer spices, single-estate teas, premium rice varieties, dairy from named Indian farms, and ready-to-cook starter kits for home cooks who want to make serious Indian food without sourcing across the country.
Japanese pantry. Small-batch soy, miso, dashi components, and seasonal preserves from regional Japanese producers — the kind of pantry that would furnish a serious home kitchen.
Lifestyle. A small curated selection of housewares, table goods, and gift items that complement the food assortment.
The store experience
The store is designed to be calm. The lighting is warm. The aisles are wide enough to browse. The shelving is built at human heights, with the eye-line products chosen for what we want to introduce that week, not for what the suppliers paid the highest slotting fee for. (There is no slotting fee at Kanhaji.)
The staff will know the stock. They will be able to tell you which producer the bread came from, which farm the eggs came from, and which Indian pantry items pair well with which Japanese ones. They will not be on the floor to monitor self-checkout queues. They will be on the floor to help.
The Kanhaji lifestyle assortment — a small, considered selection that complements the food.
The Indo-Japanese synthesis
The shape of the store reflects a particular synthesis. The Indian retail tradition contributes the warmth — the staff who remember your family, the small sample of the new arrival, the genuine interest in the customer as a person. The Japanese retail tradition contributes the rigour — what is on the label is what is in the box, the shelf is the same on Tuesday morning as it was on Monday night, the standard never quietly slips.
These two traditions are not in tension. They are complementary. The warmth makes the store a place worth being. The rigour makes it a place worth trusting. Customers who have lived between both cultures recognise the combination instantly. Customers who have only experienced one of them often describe Kanhaji as the kind of store they did not realise they had been waiting for.
Why we are building this in Tokyo
Tokyo is the most demanding retail city on earth. The customer expectation for cleanliness, reliability, and operational excellence is the highest in any market we know. That is exactly why we are opening Kanhaji here. The city forces us to be better than we would otherwise be.
It is also a city where the gap we are filling is real. The depth of premium curated grocery in central Tokyo, particularly for Indian pantry essentials of the quality serious home cooks want, is far smaller than the demand. The customer who has been making do with imports they had to special-order is the customer we are building for.
Tokyo forces us to be better than we would otherwise be. That is exactly why we are opening Kanhaji here.
The team and the timing
Kanhaji is staffed by retail operators with decades of combined experience across Japanese specialty grocery, Indian retail, and the lifestyle category in both countries. The buyers have built supplier networks across India and Japan over years; they are not learning the relationships now.
We expect to open the first Kanhaji location later this year. The location, the opening date, and the launch assortment will be announced once we are confident in all three. If you would like to be notified when we are ready to share more, the best way is to join the Kanhaji notification list on our site. We will write to that list first.
What we are inviting you to
If Kanhaji sounds like the kind of store you would want to walk into — and walk into again — we would love to have you with us when we open. Bring a curiosity about food. Allow yourself unhurried time. Talk to the staff. Tell us what you think.
The store that Kanhaji will be in 2036 is the store we are about to start building, on the morning we open the doors. The customers who choose to return, week after week, are the customers who will build it with us. We are looking forward to meeting you.
