New York Times Promotional Article for Teabox.com

notes: some interesting ideas in marketing.

DARJEELING, India — The tea plantations here in the shadow of the cloud-shrouded valleys of the Himalayan mountains may be the last place to find technological innovation. Many of the colonial-era practices involved in tea-growing and processing still follow the time-honored manual labor and handwritten bookkeeping.

But as global consumers increasingly become connoisseurs of high-quality products, one entrepreneur is seeking to give the industry a Silicon Valley makeover.

India is the world’s second-largest tea grower after China. Yet, even as the country produces quality specialty varietals that are as highly regarded as wines from France and whisky from Scotland, its industry is antiquated.

With the backing of one of Silicon Valley’s biggest venture capital firms, Accel Partners, Kaushal Dugar, a Singapore-trained financial analyst, is among those slowly bringing the sector into the modern era via his online tea retailing start-up, Teabox.

The bulk of India’s production — about one billion of the total 1.2 billion kilograms (2.6 billion pounds) — is consumed by the domestic market, where mass-market brands from the Indian conglomerate Tata and the multinational Unilever hold sway. But the remaining 200 million kilograms is a market ripe for shake-up.

“We grow some of the best teas in the world, but our processes are archaic and marketing is nonexistent,” said Arun Kumar Gomden, a tea industry consultant who managed tea estates for 35 years.

Teas lined up for tasting at the Goomtee tea estate, a supplier to Teabox.
Saritha Rai
Teas lined up for tasting at the Goomtee tea estate, a supplier to Teabox.
As is the case with other successful e-commerce sites, technology forms the core of Teabox’s online operations. Algorithms predict demand based on such factors as past sales, internal ranking of tea varieties and pricing. Information about a tea’s picking date, season and origins is made available to online customers.

Taking a cue from the successful wine industry, Teabox is bringing in wine tasters to provide engaging online descriptions for its products. Gone are the flowery but opaque descriptions like “distinctly high-grown character” and “surprising malty nuance.” They have been replaced by more consumer-friendly taster phrases like “light-bodied tea with a slight woodiness in its flavor,” along with detailed steeping instructions.

Teabox, which started in mid-2012, is introducing a subscription model offering personalized tea selections, replicating similar successes of online sites selling wine, razor blades, cosmetics and organic products.

All of these steps aim to hook a new generation of customers in countries such as Russia and the United States. As consumers on a quest for the latest niche food products veer toward drinking the brew in upscale salons and tea bars, Indian tea could tap into the large addressable global tea market, estimated to be $90 billion in size.

“Tea is a time-sensitive product, but the industry’s supply chain is quite broken and has many intermediaries,” said Prashanth Prakash, a partner at Accel India, which along with Singapore’s Horizon Ventures has provided some $1 million in early-stage funding to Teabox. “The business is ripe for disruption, both in terms of price and quality,” he said.

The venture capital approach is helping Teabox change operations. It was Accel Partners that suggested the wine industry method to “product discovery” — industry jargon for helping shoppers discern and select products online.

“By employing tactics used by the wine industry, we want to demystify tea and present it in a more accessible manner along with how-to brewing directions so that buyers can explore varieties, regions and flavors,” said Mr. Dugar, 31, founder and chief executive of Teabox, which is based in Siliguri, Darjeeling, the heart of India’s tea-growing region.

His family’s trade connections go back four decades and give Mr. Dugar access to high-quality teas from the estates of Assam and Darjeeling. From his childhood summers spent on plantations, he recalls the tea pluckers picking two leaves and a bud that was transformed into brewed tea within hours. “I imagined that the workers in tea plantations were magicians.”

Kaushal Dugar, chief of Teabox.
Saritha Rai
Kaushal Dugar, chief of Teabox.
Mr. Dugar had worked for a few years as a corporate finance analyst at consultancy firm KPMG in Singapore, but he then returned to India to become an entrepreneur. He and his backers quickly discovered that the industry first organized by British colonizers about 200 years ago has not changed at all. Many plantations are controlled by third- or fourth-generation owners, using machines dating back a half-century or more.

“Traditional processes such as withering, rolling, drying are all manually monitored just like it was when the tea industry was first established in this region centuries ago,” said Amar Nath Jha, a senior manager of the 162-year old Steinthal Tea Estate in Darjeeling, a supplier to Teabox.

Because of the lengthy auction and distribution process, it can take up to six months for the tea to reach a consumer overseas.

“The lack of modern infrastructure leads to tea quality deteriorating and losing aroma along the way,” said Mr. Gomden, the tea consultant.

To change that, Teabox set up sourcing centers in Darjeeling and Assam, within a few hours from the gardens where the leaves are plucked and processed. (Other buyers have also begun to bypass the auction system and buy premium teas directly from producers).

Almost as soon as the teas are procured fresh from the production centers, Teabox stores them in temperature- and humidity-controlled warehouses. Then, within 48 hours, the teas are checked, vacuum-packed and dispatched to fulfillment centers in major markets such as Russia, the United States and Australia.

Data analytics also help. When they log into the website, buyers are served personalized recommendations according to one of Teabox’s 53 tea profiles.

Customer feedback goes quickly back to the producers. For example, Teabox now sells tea only in 100-gram vacuum packs after complaints that tea in larger packs lost aroma.

The company tries to win over customer share its audience by offering high-end teas at a discount to established brands like Twinings and upscale European, Asian and American tea salons, all of which sell online (Teabox’s products can sell for as much as $1,099 per kilogram).

For instance, a French tea salon called Palais des Thés sells the Mission Hill tea at $340 per kilogram, but Teabox sells the same product about 60 percent less at $126 per kilogram. TWG, a high-end tea bar in Singapore, sells the Okayti at $390 per kilogram while Teabox sells it as $180, less than half the price.

Teabox is still a small player in the industry: It has shipped 10 million cups’ worth of tea to customers in 65 countries so far. The challenges are many. Traditional distributors have blocked access to plantations and Teabox has had to counter rumors from rivals that it is an unreliable buyer.

Mohan Chirimar, 53, of Raghunath Exports, a bulk supplier to Starbucks as well as retail chains and supermarkets in 30 countries, said Teabox was chasing a big opportunity that had room for other entrepreneurs.

Raghunath Exports is itself gearing up to compete online as Mr. Chirimar’s 23-year old son, Aditya, a recent graduate from Cornell University, has returned this month to join the business. “He is going to expand our business online; it offers more opportunities and will speed up our growth,” Mr. Chirimar said.

Teabox does have an early-mover advantage but must now build its name. Regular access to financing will help Teabox ramp up its brand in crucial markets like the United States where tea drinking growth rates are overtaking coffee. The start-up aims to grow 300 to 500 percent in the coming year and cross $1 million in annual revenue.

“With cash in the bank and support from investors, we can dream about quickly building a billion-dollar tea brand from India, something that has never been attempted before,” Mr. Dugar said.

Indian Tea Distributor Recommended by Kavita Kapoor

I have been ordering some amazing Darjeeling teas from Golden Tips www.goldentipstea.com for the last 4 years here in LA. Surprisingly they are not mentioned here but I believe they are the one who started selling single estate darjeelings.(Madhav Sarda I believe is the owner) I know a lot of people who order from them and their prices are much lesser than even Teabox.com

Indian Teas Recommended by Gordon Ackerman Albany, NY

two of the world's finest teas, "Assam Greenwood" and "Darjeeling Margaret's Hope", but my favorites (notably, the exquisite and rare "Kenilworth") come from Sri Lanka. I would direct tea-fancier to "The Book of Tea," a great classic.

White Tea in Fuding 2014

The domain of Fuding stretches from the sea shore across a coastal plane and up into mountains reaching 2000 meters in altitude. Spanning marshes and tangled forests, the defining characteristic of Fuding's terroir are the streaks of vibrant orange clay produced by lichens consuming the underlying igneous stone.

This year's wet weather allows us take a break from picking tea buds to explore the range of Fuding's environs. Usually higher altitudes produce better teas, but Fuding's coastal white teas can be excellent as well, especially when aged. Here, by a cove where seaweed is farmed, we find sixty year old bushes on the steep hillside opposite a temple. While this year's tea was dried too slow, the briny wind leaves an exciting component to its flavor. We look forward to returning next year when we can purchase green leaves ourselves and dry them gently in our hotel room.

A few hours drive inland Fuding's white mountain tea has also been plagued by sporadic storms. The weather this spring has been unusually cold, with snow over the new year and frosting until two weeks ago. This means the tea buds are smaller, which itself is not so worrisome. A dearth of sunny days, however, has been a deal breaker for early white tea: all is either oven dried or reddened due to prolonged drying.

While we remain in the mountains it mists and rains five of the week's seven days.

With a day's picking farmers gathers at nearby crossroads to sell on into the supply chains of factories large and small who have the ovens required to dry the tea. While oven temperatures are kept below 50 degrees centigrade, this still flattens the brightness that we look for in the best fresh bai hao yin zhen (white hair silver needle). Locals say on years like this there is only hong hao yin zhen (red hair silver needle).

Shade dried too slow or heated in walk-in and specialty coal-fired ovens, none of the teas have the almost citrus splash of vibrance that makes Fuding's white tea China's best.

Both make infusions which exhibit flaws. Shade dried tea steeps (L) darker and harder tasting - erring into the red tea spectrum. Oven dried tea steeps (R) greener and buttery tasting - erring into the green tea spectrum.

A proper white tea, dried in the shade, consistently, over four days, will be lighter in color still, white even, and its taste is almost no taste at all, but something that just falls away, effervescent, light behind the eyes, flirting, with an after-breath of sea and pine.

One Picking of One Cháwáng by One Woman

Puer Jǐngmaì Cháwáng

So much affects the flavor a tea infuses into water: each year's weather; where a tea grows; who fixes it; who prepares it; how it is stored; even who sips it. Over the years we have worked to decrease these variables so we might learn the taste of one earth and one tree.



We found one solution to this problem in western Yúnnán at a village that has been largely unimproved for sixty years. Shown here, the village leader's house in the foreground and the temple beyond, they flank a tightly woven, almost cosmopolitan network of alleyways in this dimple of hilly woodlands at 1500m.

The grandmother is taking care of her child's child's child's child, and very happy to see us. She says it is the first time a foreigner has come to her home.

The village's tea grove is splattered with tea trees of all ages. As with most of the old tea groves in Yúnnán the oldest trees were planted by the Bùlǎng tribe long ago. Because tea trees germinate only with difficulty new trees have sprouted slowly over the centuries creating a dappled tapestry with younger trees populating the fringes and older trees within.

We pass men picking tea above us on the path to grandmother's tree. They balance precariously on surprisingly lithe branches that bend and sway beneath them.

Grandmother's tree is not only the oldest in her village's grove, it also is of special renown because it has what locals call "eyes". While a century ago all the tribes performed detailed rituals and sacrifices for their tea trees, now Jingmai is one of the only areas where the tribes still perform yearly public and personal offerings to many of the tea trees.

In half a day this tree's spring shoots, two leaves and a bud, are picked clean, yielding two kilograms of dry tea when, in another day, they are fried and rolled and sun dried. We are lucky there is no rain!

For fun the granddaughter, done picking tea, puts on her ethnic festival costume and bounces on the limb of one of her family trees. (In this case both grandmother and granddaughter are ethnic Bùlǎng.) We are happy, too, continuing to build our collection of a Jingmai dark tea, picked at first blush from one tree by one woman who herself fries, rolls, and sundries it just for us! That's pretty special. And we can drink it anytime at home, comparing it with years past and forward, and even against the other famous tea mountains of Yúnnán and further afield.

Spring 2014 Puer Survives Coldest Winter in Memory

Sorry to be so long gone. All this technology... It's a fast business, and the act of posting is very different from actually getting things done. Now there are more than five internet platforms on which I try to start representing tea. Frankly it makes sense, what the scientists say, that this social division of our efforts is making us less aware and more stupid. So here's to slowing down and focusing on what's important, with a cup of tea.

Liubao Old and Authentic

2013’s first tea hunt brought our tea society into the villages around the legendary site of the "sixth tea mountain", Liubao. Located in Guangxi province (map), east of Yunnan, this town was likely a location for taxation, just like the namesake village of what was formerly known as Puer. Old people have told us no one knows where the best liubao tea came from because today's maps have adopted new names. If anyone has any idea where we might find old maps of Guangxi province, please let us know!

The quality of tea grown on the hills here aside, Liubao was likely the location that gave this tea its legal name. After falling out of favor in concert with the construction of dams, which made continued transportation of tea from here prohibitive, the town struggled and today looks a bit like an industrial wasteland. We don’t find a single restaurant from which we wanted to eat in Liubao town, but luckily locals treat us to their hospitality. Unlike other tea regions in China, in this region the smallest villages often have dedicated tea stores prospering on the local economy. The number of different liubao teas astounds. Young and old leaves, even branches, flowers, and seeds are steeped into tea.



The favorite liubao found this year was a ten year old lao people tea, called, “little chick” because the balls of tea are the size of a baby chicken. Some have suggested it was the Lao people, whose migrations through this region, first brought tea culture/economy/history here. Guangxi tea culture goes back a long way, and many locals claim this was where the “shou puer process” was created and perfected hundreds of years ago.



Different styles of Yao tribal tea very in appearance. The basic idea however is to barbeque the leaves a little and then roll them into balls in the palm of the hand. This had a nice, clear, betel nut flavor.



This wild tree liubao is made in a similar fashion. Here are two teas from the same farmer, one six years old, one from last year. The mountain - indicated by a wave of the arm - over there – has old tea trees in the forest. The mountain belongs to a village, and some of those villagers climb the mountain each spring to pick tea and sell it to him. Customers rarely buy it, and he is happy to sell us all he has. A little smoky, after the years a cooling betel nut flavor emerges. That some teas picked in this region develop the flavor and some do not, he is insistent on, but he also admits he does not know the reason.



What looks like a block of wood from a sunken ship catches our attention in one shop. What some have called mud tea, the original tea from liubao, Guangxi largely stopped producing a half century before. We are told dams on the rivers made the transport of it south to Guangzhou nearly impossible. Chips from this log so far have been the most popular among subscribers of this spring’s Guangxi tea find. The proprietor did not know the age of the tea shown above. Indeed he didn’t know anything about Guangxi’s history of making south-east asia’s most popular dark tea. He found this tea in the home of a farmer who himself did not know the provenance or age.



Pondering whether this infusion tastes like roots or the skin of grapes, we all agree it has a surprisingly unique flavor, undoubtedly old.

Spring’s first dark tea arrived from a nearby village while we were in this store.



Sharing it with our Beijing tea friends, one told us it is a hybrid green and dark tea. Because it was wok fried on coals resulting in little green bubbles on the dried leaves’ surface it has a buttery flavor in the mouth. Our dear tea teacher Xiao Liu explained that the coals were in contact with the steel of the wok in which the tea was fixed. In singular places the heat was high enough to heat the tea leaf buds into green tea.




Notice the light green blisters on the tea. This results in an uncharacteristically soft taste to this tea, mixing the depth of a sheng dark tea with the smooth buttery taste of green tea. It will be interesting to see how this tea ages, and whether the moments of green tea on these buds do just fade, as Xiao Liu says they will.