To a tea

These entrepreneurs are brewing a storm in a teacup for the right reasons, writes Sharmila Vaidyanathan

When Elizabeth Yambem talks about her childhood years in Manipur’s capital city of Imphal, her narratives are filled with the wonders of the natural world. Verdant hills, the refreshing zing of Sumac berries after spending hours outside, and the comfort of Nong-mang-kha or Titaaphul leaves (Phlogacanthus thyrsiformis) to cure a bad cold; nature was right there at her doorstep. Years later, while working as a financial analyst in London and then Singapore, Elizabeth found herself longing for those familiar flavours. She found a way to reconnect with her childhood memories while reigniting an interest in the indigenous herbs and fruits of her homeland. All she had to do was brew the right cuppa!

A tea entrepreneur today, Elizabeth established her tea venture in 2016. “I wanted to get back to my roots. I felt that it was important to do something to preserve our indigenous products and highlight their traditional medicinal values. I found a way to do that by blending them with tea,” she says. Sounds simple and straightforward, but Elizabeth’s journey has been anything but that. During her sojourn in London, she found herself experimenting with many flavours of tea, while her own idea steeped and simmered in her mind. Once she knew that she was on the right path, she packed her bags and moved back to India, spending about a year in Assam researching on tea before finally launching her brand in Imphal, Manipur. Her teas include a Fruity Roselle Olive tea, a Spiced Hog Plum and King Chilli tea and a Garcinia Green Tea, among other unique flavours.

A cuppa that cheers

Several small-scale tea ventures in India are coming up with exciting ways to add a dash of sustainability to the country’s favourite drink — a title that speaks for itself. After all, India consumed approximately one billion kilograms of tea during the financial year of 2020. While masala chai still ranks the favourite among tea drinkers, urban consumers are slowly discovering that a good tea can be much more than a milky, sugary concoction. Armed with better knowledge about the benefits of tea and in pursuit of healthier options, they are now turning to speciality tea varieties. For Assam-based Upamanyu Borkakoty and Anshuman Bharali, this shift seemed to be the right time to introduce the country to the unique flavour profiles of single-origin teas.

Childhood friends who found a shared interest in tea, the duo launched their tea venture in 2015, connecting small-scale naturally grown tea farms in Assam and the neighbouring states to international markets. They soon began exploring options within India as well. “We have our own facility where we do a lot of research on different tea production styles to create unique tasting characteristics,” says Borkakoty. “Tea cultivation has been going on for ages, and what the farmers need is the right production support to bring out the inherent flavours. We started working on different techniques to highlight the unique flavours of each farm,” he adds.

Beyond enhancing the flavour, the duo is working towards preserving and encouraging the practices of small tea growers. Through their interactions with tea farmers, Borkakoty and Bharali found that several of them were considering moving away from their sustainable methods in order to increase yields and meet the pressures of the market. “Small tea growers contribute to around 50 per cent of the total production. They produce an incredible variety of teas, but market opportunities are not abundant for them. We are hoping to change that,” adds Borkakoty.

Beyond the cup & the estate

When you think of tea, your mind conjures up images of vast estates that roll through the hilly regions of the northeast and southern parts of the country. What about tea that grows unattended in our forests, asks Boilal Gangte of Manipur, adding a new term to our tea vocabulary — wild tea. Gangte and his siblings came across the concept in 2017 when they learned about wild tea from parts of China being processed and sold in the international market as premium products. “We knew the concept of wild tea from our childhood days. Our grandparents used to drink it often. But we never thought more about it,” shares Gangte.

Gangte and his sisters Aijulie Simte, Jemshe Vaiphei, and Julie Gangte, were already thinking of ways to improve the local economy in Manipur, when they began exploring this concept further. “It really helped us connect all the dots of creating a premium product from our rich landscape that will also benefit the economy and help us establish a family venture. Wild tea ticked all our boxes,” adds Gangte. The team is joined by their mother, Nemzating, in this venture which was launched in 2018. Gangte shares that wild tea has been growing in the forests of southern Manipur for centuries.

Apart from being taller than the cultivated tea bushes, wild tea trees have deeper root systems and grow naturally amid rich biodiversity, adding to their complex flavours. The products are processed completely by hand, ensuring livelihood options for several people in the region. “A lot of the economy here is dependent on the shifting method of agriculture which the locals use to grow staples. This leads to clearing of forest areas and loss of biodiversity,” adds Gangte. He hopes to generate sustained employment for at least 1,000 families in the region through this venture. “Not only will this improve their livelihood, but we will also be saving thousands of acres of forest land from being converted for agriculture,” he adds.

Both Elizabeth and Borkakoty share that their ventures too have encouraged direct and indirect employment. “Entrepreneurship is not that common here, so having the right help made all the difference. We are 21 people in the team, and 18 of them are women,” shares Yambem. Additionally, she talks about how these indigenous products are mainly gathered and processed by women to make pickles and candies. She hopes that her venture will give these products and the women who depend on them a new lease of life. During the first wave of the pandemic, healthy tea options were widely sought, and these entrepreneurs saw a surge in demand for their products. Borkakoty and his team launched their new product, the world’s first bagless tea in November 2020. As the video showcasing tea leaves dried and compressed to a solid, unfurling in a cup of warm water sans the microplastics of a teabag went viral, the team was flooded with more orders than they could manage. The team is currently gearing up to launch their products in Australia and Canada as well.