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Teabox only company to reach 100 countries globally in span of four years
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Monday, 29 May, 2017, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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 Teabox is an online tea shop offering globally a variety of 200-300 loose-leaf teas from over 150 estates across India and Nepal. With the mission to ensure that every cup of tea consumed is fresh, Teabox, through innovations in supply chain, cold chain processing and packaging, has disrupted the 200-year-old tea industry.
Industrialist and investor Ratan Tata has invested in this Siliguri-based start-up, whose teas go to the firm’s cold storage within 48 hours of production. Here they are vacuum-packed and shipped to customers around the world in about a week. Teabox intends to become the first Make in India consumer-focused global brand.
Kaushal Dugar, founder and chief executive officer, Teabox, in an e-mail interaction with Shraddha Joshi, spoke about the tea business in India.
What factors influenced your foray into the ready-to-drink tea business?
My family has been involved in tea for the last 50 years. My father supplied tea estates with machinery and equipment, and my brother runs a tea export business. When I was growing up in the tea garden and visiting estates with my father, I used to think the men working in the fields were magicians because of how they were able to transform the tea leaves.
Twenty years down the line, after working in outside industries, I realised just how outdated the tea industry had become. Most tea companies are 50-60 years old, and very comfortable with the way things have been done since their inception.
I founded Teabox not only to bring consumers the freshest, most delicious teas from the origins of where it is grown, but also to instill that same sense of magic and wonder I felt when I was growing up.
The year 2016 was poor in terms of investments in start-ups. However, Teabox is rated as one of the hottest start-ups in the food and beverage technology category. To what factors is it attributable?
The quality and freshness of our teas is our unique selling proposition (USP). We visit the tea gardens, taste and select the teas we want to sell. The teas are vacuum-packed to retain freshness.
We source our teas from some of the best tea gardens in Darjeeling, Assam, the Nilgiris, Kangra, Sikkim and now even Nepal.
Details of the teas we sell are extremely comprehensive. We want our customers to know where we are sourcing the teas from, the date of plucking, tasting notes, garden details, etc. We are making the search for premium teas an easy, accessible and very pleasant one.
Being a global player, how far has Teabox reached globally? With the global reach, where do you see Teabox by 2020?
In the history of the tea industry, Teabox is the only company to have reached more than 100 countries globally in the span of four years.
Teabox is disrupting the $40 billion tea industry with its innovations in technology and the supply chain.
Rated as one of the hottest start-ups in the food technology category, it sources teas directly from plantations in Darjeeling, Assam and the Nilgiris, and vacuum packs the leaves often within 48 hours of sourcing.
By shipping directly from the processing warehouses to customers in over 100 countries within three to five days, it ensures every customer has the freshest tea possible.
By 2020, we would be known as a global tea brand from India.
Coffee has grown at an exceptional rate in India in the past few years. Has tea fallen behind comparatively? Elaborate.
Tea is a different kind of experience than coffee. You can’t just grab it go, especially loose leaf tea. You have to make time for the steeping process, which becomes almost methodical.
We have worked hard to educate our consumers about tea and the ritual of drinking tea; we want to inspire creativity and highlight the beauty of connecting with each other.
We have several exciting things coming down the pipeline that we know will make Teabox even more attractive (and convenient) to consumers in the coming months.
Without having a physical presence, how does Teabox ensure that their consumers get fresh tea? Is your product widely available on digital platforms?
The Teabox website provides exhaustive information around the estate the tea comes from, the season it was grown in, the date it was picked on and the detailed information about its tasting profile.
This not only helps us build credibility with our customers, but it also enables them to make a much more informed decision that they do not have to rely on hearsay or information their local store owner would otherwise tell them.
Your product is ready-to-drink (RTD) tea with different variants. Will it compete with the beverage category as a whole? If yes, how do you plan to face the competition from the other soft and juice-based drinks, which hold a large share in the pie of the beverage segment?
We are into the business of teas. Tea is not only a beverage, but an integral part of India’s lifestyle. India is home to several rich and exquisite varieties of teas, which have captivated, mesmerised and enthralled the world for centuries.
India has 25 per cent share of the total tea production, but consumes 75-80 per cent of its own production.
Coffee is a versatile beverage and has transcended beyond levels in last few years. India is the third largest producer and exporter of coffee in Asia, and the sixth largest producer and fifth largest exporter of coffee in the world.
Of the total coffee produced in India, 70 per cent is exported and 30 per cent is consumed domestically. The country accounts for 3.9 per cent of the global coffee production.
What are the various types of teas you are offering? What is your target audience?
We source premium loose-leaf teas from Darjeeling, Nepal, the Nilgiris, Assam and Kangra regions in India.
About 70 per cent of the tea that is produced in India is black tea. However, we do source special varietals of white, oolong and green teas, primarily from Darjeeling, Nepal and Nilgiri regions.
Darjeeling Spring Flush and Summer Flush are our top favourites, but the teas from Assam and the Nilgiris also seem to be catching up soon.
Our research and development (R&D) team consists of food technologists and blenders. Direct access to fresh teas, immediately after production, coupled with a deep understanding of the palates of consumers, enables us to create exciting new tea blends.
Our customer base is a surprisingly diverse group of people - male and female, in multiple age groups, in every kind of profession.
Typically, if you were to compare our customers with that of regular tea buyers, you would notice that our consumers are better educated, more sophisticated, better travelled, more adventurous and more discerning.
These tea consumers are also engaging in fulfilling their need for learning, discovery, adventure, and experience. Teabox is geared to address this kind of customer segment.
Are you working on any new product launches? Tell us about the new innovations, design and packaging technology used by Teabox?
Last year, we launched TeaPacs, the highest quality loose leaf tea in and on-the-go option without compromising on the flavour or freshness.
We are the first company in the beverage market to use a natural nitrogen flush. This approach creates a non-reactive environment to protect tea from oxygen, light, heat and moisture – elements that compromise the integrity of tea, causing deterioration and loss of flavour.
Traditional tea bags are filled with broken tea leaves: packaging constrains the leaves, preventing them from reaching their flavour potential.
TeaPacs feature a pyramid-shaped bag, allowing leaves to unfurl, resulting in tea steeped with full-bodied flavour.
Coming from a tea family and spending my childhood amongst tea estates, I grew up drinking some of the world’s best teas – so I know how fresh tea is meant to taste.
At Teabox, we want to ensure that every cup of tea consumed is the freshest in the world, but we know that not everyone has time to steep loose leaf.
We created TeaPacs so that anyone can enjoy the world’s freshest tea, anywhere, anytime.
What trends you are witnessing in the tea category in India?
I think we are experiencing the second wave of e-commerce.
The first wave consisted of large-scale e-commerce companies such as Flipkart or Amazon, who were primarily solving for convenience.
They did it by using levers such as price, selection and good, reliable customer support. However, they did not fully replace the existing retailers.
Teabox is part of the second generation, that is focused on the vertical integration of manufacturing, branding, and distribution, while upending the traditional retail model in the process.
There seems to be a renewed interest in the tea category. But having said that, most of the new tea brands seem to be just putting a new spin on the last-mile delivery.
When we started, we decided to take the difficult road of turning things on its head - by setting up our presence at the source, by creating a genuine set of benefits for our consumers and by choosing to use technology to reach more consumers as opposed to a traditional brick-and-mortar set up.
This meant owning and operating the entire value chain grounds-up, starting from farm to cup. This approach, we believe, gives us the advantage of greater control over consumer experience, and hence, will be very beneficial in the long run.
What are the opportunities in and challenges faced by the sector?
Despite the 200-odd-year-old legacy and heritage of producing top-grade specialty varietals, the Indian tea industry continues to remain stuck in the past.
The tea growers have largely been relegated to the role of just suppliers. For instance, you still can’t think of a global premium tea brand that has emerged out of India in the last few decades.
If you were to compare this with the wine industry in the United States, which is just a three or four-decade-old story, it seems like we haven’t really fared all that well.
Even among the devout Darjeeling tea lovers, there is little awareness about the nuances of premium teas from India beyond the three or four-odd well-known estates.
There could be many reasons for this. The country didn’t provide a very conducive environment for businesses to thrive until 1991, when the economy finally opened up.
Plus, the Darjeeling region is part of the West Bengal state, which was governed by a communist political party for over three decades. It was noted for its anti-industrial policies. The current market, however, is ready for a shake-up.
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