Nothing can match up to the wholesomeness of a freshly brewed cup of tea. Sadly, most desi tea lovers don’t have easy access to freshly sourced teas and make do with mass produced options. Premium tea label Teabox has made an audacious leap with its crop-to-cup approach where it brings the tea drinkers closer to the source of their teas, by cutting short the long supply chain and producing loose leaf teas sourced directly from the growers, be it the high-grown Nilgiri or a brisk Darjeeling tea.
“Teabox started with the pure intent of providing the freshest of teas to tea lovers. Teas are hygroscopic in nature and deserve to be treated exactly the way fruits and vegetables are treated. The only way to achieve that is by being at the source, in direct contact with the estates. And of course, a state of the art facility with dehumidifiers to control the moisture level in the air and store teas at -5degree to maintain the freshness,” Kausshal Dugarr, Founder and CEO of Teabox, tells us. We caught up with Kausshal to explore his vision further:
Can you tell us how the brand reduces the tea route to deliver fresher varieties?
The logistics of the traditional tea business have always been inefficient and fragmented. The producers are scattered across remote mountainous regions, production is seasonal. The logistics of moving the tea through storage, auctions, local trucking, direct sale contracts, export shipping, inspection, packaging, blending, customs, wholesaling, and so on is a huge task. Teabox, being at the source, tries to bring efficiency into the system and bring down the time of delivery from 12-24 weeks to about a week and thereby, ensuring the consumers are able to enjoy the real taste of fresh teas.
Our sourcing, storing and fulfillment center is strategically located in Siliguri, West Bengal which is at the heart of the tea growing region and within 48 hrs of produce we get teas delivered to our facility where they are processed and stored in a temperature and humidity controlled environment.
Tell us about your wellness teas, since they are doing so well amid the COVID crisis
People are looking for specific teas that are curated for specific wellness attributes. Weight loss teas being most popular. We launched herbal teas in 2018, these herbal formulations were inspired by Ayurveda and Western medicine. These natural, caffeine-free formulations are made with whole ingredients, sourced from the highlands of Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand and the Nilgiris. With the ongoing pandemic we have experienced a surge in demand for these formulations, as consumers are being cautious and prioritising health.
Tell us how your customer base has evolved in the last few years?
India is primarily a CTC (the typical granular Crush-Tear-Curl tea ) market. The majority of the population still love their milk-tea, popularly known as ‘Chai,’ but their choices have broadened. Millennials, especially, prefer different teas, a strong cup of Chai in the morning, a cup of Morrocan mint in the office and a soothing cup of Chamomile before bed. We have also seen a sudden change in buying patterns among older customers who are now buying exotic blends such as ivory geranium, Mountain rose and Blue amore apart from their regular single-origin teas.