TeaBro startups are brewing the perfect cup of tea for the chai-crazy Indian market

TeaBro startups are brewing the perfect cup of tea for the chai-crazy Indian market

The popularity of the tea and cafe culture and the introduction of new varieties of tea has fuelled the growth of tea-based startups.

The tea market is primarily driven by the several health benefits associated with consumption as well as the increase in awareness related to carbonated drinks. Moreover, the popularity of the tea and cafe culture, rise in disposable income, change in tastes, and introduction of additional healthy ingredients in tea by different market players have also fuelled the market growth.

Startups across the country are now bringing a variety to tea connoisseurs. In India, tea consumption occupies more than 79-percent share in the non-alcoholic beverage market, and is valued at more than $30 billion. In an interaction with IdeapreneurIndia.com, TeaBro startup founder talked about his journey and experience.

Question - What is the product/service you provide? What is the company’s long and short term vision? What is the core belief of the team behind running the company?

Answer - TeaBro - We manufacture and sell India's first Pre-Brewed Tea Liquid Decoction (A Instant Tea offering). We are Tea Farmers from Assam and control the entire supply chain of Tea from Farm to Cup.

Tea Bro is a 2-month-old startup with a clear mission to - “To serve high-quality Instant Tea to our Tea loving nation”. This patent-pending product is a ‘Ready to Drink’ Tea which is pre-brewed to perfection from the finest Assam Teas with love and care. Just add TeaBro to a cup of hot water and Done! Your cup of Tea is ready in 5 sec. Enjoy the perfectly balanced Milk Tea (in 5 Exotic Indian Flavours), Instantly!

Short Term Vision – 

a) To serve high quality Tea (Instantly) to our Tea loving nation.

b) To bring in innovation in the Tea industry and the way high quality tea is farmed, processed, blended and served.

Long Term Vision – 

a) India wide distribution channel (online and offline).

b) Sales abroad for our tea offering.

(Pic: Founder - Kartic Sharma )

Question - Industry, target market size, market share. How did you calculate/find it? and Do mention the sources. 

Answer - 1) Tea in India is USD 33Bn dollar market. Indians last year consumer 110Mn kgs of tea per year.

2) Tea is the second most drunk beverage in India after water.

3) The Instant Tea market is the only sector in India which is one the rise.

Source: Tea Board of India, Guwahati Tea Auction Centre.

Question - Where do you see your industry going in the next five years?

Answer - In the next 5 years:

1) With rapid urbanization and essentially people having less time to do the daily chores themselves, I believe that Instant Tea will be a very common phenomenon in most of the household. If you see markets like USA, which is a fairly urbanized market – has more demand for instant offering (tea, coffee, soda) than the actual ones.

2) In the next 5 years, the Instant Tea market should atleast make up about 15% to 20% of the Tea consumption in India.

Question - How did you get inspiration for the Company? How did you go about researching and validating the idea?

Answer - The journey of ideation, designing, prototyping your initial thought.

Question -  Who were the initial people you talked about your Company with? How was their response?

Answer - I am from Assam and my family has been involved in the Tea industry for over 3 generation. We have seen the industry closely for the last 38 years and have realized that there has been very little improvement /innovation. Moreover the way people consumed tea has also been the same for over 50 years now. A TeaBag was also introduced to the world about 40 years back. The last innovation in which Instant Tea was offered was ‘Powdered Instant Tea’, which was made by a process called Spray Drying.

We found that there was no way in which companies were able to offer good quality tea in a ReadyToDrink manner. That’s when it stricked to us that we can do something to solve this problem. After months of R & D we came up with TeaBro. This patent-pending product is a ‘Ready to Drink’ Tea which is pre-brewed to perfection from the finest Assam Teas with love and care. Just add TeaBro to a cup of hot water and Done! Your cup of Tea is ready in 5 sec. Enjoy the perfectly balanced Milk Tea (in 5 Exotic Indian Flavours), Instantly !

We have had tremendous response from Tea connoisseurs and Tea blenders and tasters about its high quality and Tea innovation. In the last 2 months, since we have been live, the market response (where ever we are present) has been encouraging.

Question - Mention if you pivoted from the initial product? If yes, when and why did you decide to pivot? Kindly name any other subsidiary if you have?

Answer - Product Working -  Just add TeaBro to a cup of hot water and Done! Your cup of Tea is ready in 5 sec. Enjoy the perfectly balanced Milk Tea (in 5 Exotic Indian Flavours), Instantly !

Problem Solve – 1) TeaBags – In using TeaBags the process of brewing is never complete. By the time brewing is complete the temperature of water goes down. Therefore, there is never a good tea drinking experience with tea bags. 2) Premixes are easy to use but lack the quality in the cup. Premixes are mad by a process called Spray Drying. Tea is only spray dried at or above temperatures of 180C. At this temperature range, all the constituents of Tea (its flavours, aroma, enzymes, polyhenols etc) are all burnt off. Therefore, essentially Premixes have more of a punch of masalas rather than tea.

TeaBro is a new category in the instant Tea market. We manufacture and sell India’s first ‘Pre-Brewed Tea Liquid’. This patent-pending product is a ‘Ready to Drink’ Tea which is pre-brewed to perfection from the finest Assam Teas with love and care.

Question - How did you meet/convince your co-founder/s to join you and what is their background?

Answer - Founder – Kartic Sharma (Engineering + Management Graduate) – University of British Columbia, Canada

Experience – Management Consulting and Investments (Accenture, Invest India, Delhivery)

Question -How did you come up with the name, tagline, and logo for your Company?

Answer - Sometimes there are interesting stories around coming up with names and we can't afford to miss it.

The word ‘BRO’, is used very often in urban and rural India now. Even if a person does not know English very well, would know the meaning of this word. We wanted to have the name of the company which is most relatable to the masses. Tea is and will be our main product always. Hence TeaBro

Question - Please brief us on the business and revenue model. Do include pricing range, profit margin or commission if comfortable.

Answer - Business Model – Sales (Online + Offline). Institutional Sales (hotels, offices, flights, trains, indian army etc)

Question - How did you launch your company when you had just 0 users. Which channels/ tools/strategies worked the most for acquiring the first 100 users?

Answer - Channels – We did pop up kiosk across Gurgaon (in apartments, offices, co-working spaces, events etc). This helped people to get introduced to our concept and innovation. Online sales was been working well for us for now We got an institutional Purchase Order from a large office and a hotel

Question - Since launch, what has worked to attract and retain customers/clients?

Answer - Again, Going from 100 to 10000 is a whole different story. What are the key strategies/hacks that you have been following since the beginning? You can also include any tie-up/partnership. Any marketing campaign which went viral. 

Question - Most challenging part and how did you overcome it?

Answer - One major challenge faced and how did you solve it. 

Question - What are some experiments /first-time things you did which worked/didn’t work?

Answer - Challenge of introducing our product in modern retail. The have a huge listing fee. We worked a deal with them to offer more margin in compare to high capital cost for listing fees. Worked better for us.

Question - Funding

Answer - We are currently a bootstrapped company

Question - Is anyone mentoring/advising your company?

Answer - We have technical experts, who help us in the product side. Not any mentor as of now in the sales and marketing side of things,

Question - Share the name of some top competitors?

Answer - We do not have any direct competition for our offering, Pre-Brewed Tea Liquid. We are the first company in India to make a product of this sort and therefore for the product and the process, we have a Patent Pending status. Instant Tea have traditionally been offered in Tea Bags or Premixes. There are hundreds of companies in India who retail these. TeaBro is the first company in India to offer Ready To Drink tea in a Pre-Brewed Tea Liquid format. 

Question - Tools that you use in your company?

Answer - We are a manufacturing company so have plants and machinery. We use very basic online free tools. Google suite is the best.

Question -  Let us know if you have received any awards or recognized by any reputed organization. Let us know your biggest achievement till today.

Answer - We have been nominated by Industry Outlook and Fortune magazine to feature in the ‘Top Upcoming startup edition’.

Question - Share your future plans about your product features or any business expansion Plans?

Answer - We want to carve a niche for our product in the Indian tea market.

Website - https://www.teabro.co/

TeaBro Introduction Video