What made you come up with the idea and concept of Woolah Tea? Please share your entrepreneurial journey till date and vision?
We are now into the tea industry for the last five years and have been successfully running a small (tea grower focussed and sustainably-grown) tea sourcing platform for tea boutiques in Europe and North America popularly known as The Tea Leaf Theory. Our focus was to craft award winning 'Single Origin Limited Batch Teas' from Assam to create a mark in the World of Speciality teas, where Assam Teas are predominantly known as a regular breakfast tea.
We realised that even though Whole leaf speciality teas in the West have a good demand but it is still a niche market with very low growth. Moreover, the speciality tea in India is still a new concept for the consumers and requires a lot of education (tea related). We wanted to have a product that would cut short the tea education for faster adoption and transition to the whole leaf tea experience.
Also, micro-plastics released from tea bags have been a big concern for the world at large. As per researchers at McGrill University in Canada a single teabag releases around 11.6 billion micro-plastics.
So we wanted to develop a product that is as exotic as it can be, sustainably and organically grown and also as easy as brewing a teabag.
After a year and five months of research and product development, we have created the World's first bagless teadips with tender wholesome tea leaves which we named it as Truedips.
This led to the launch of our brand Woolah which means happiness in Assamese.
Our patent-pending technology also compressed the tea leaves to lock the exotic flavour and aroma for a longer period. It can also be brewed multiple times.
Please elaborate on the value chain of Woolah Tea and how exactly it impacts beneficiaries?
We at Woolah endeavour to create the happiest value chain in the world of Tea. We have been able to generate employment for more than 120 rural women across three micro-factories in Assam and earn atleast 20% above the industry average. The Truedips project has also been able to increase the revenue of the organic micro-factories by 3x and profitability by 2x.
Also briefly tell us about your packaging and retail strategies? What is the current market share?
We believe in adopting sustainable packaging alternatives just like our product. We have been trying to eliminate plastics in any form as much as possible in our packaging. Our sachets are made of paper aluminium and outer boxes are made of recyclable paper.
We are currently available only through our online store www.woolahtea.com in the domestic market and plan to make it available across different premium stores in major cities of India by end of 2022. Apart from that, we will soon make our products available through Amazon, Flipkart, Big Basket etc.
What were the main challenges that you faced in your business and how did you overcome them?
The first of its kind product also comes with first of its kind challenges in the world.
Just when the product gained popularity, Assam was hit by drought followed by the Covid second wave in 2021 and the production suffered heavily from April to July. The only thing we could do is develop technologies so that we can reduce human intervention in the production line and increase production considerably to scale up in the shortest time possible.
Access to finance to scale up the operations was another challenge. Investment opportunities in Assam have always been scarce compared to the available options in Tier 1 cities of India. We started looking for opportunities for distribution of our products outside India for easier access to funds and have been successful in setting up the business in Canada and Australia.
NRL Ideation incidentally came to our rescue just when we needed the funds to design machineries to bring in semi-automation in the production process. The fund has been well utilised and also has been able to onboard three micro-factories to increase the production.
Why is professional mentorship/guidance vital for a first time entrepreneur? Please share your opinion and maybe your own experience
Entrepreneurship is a tough self-learning journey of exploration and addressing the gaps in the market. Most of the time what seems to be a big problem may not be big a problem- it just needs to be addressed. Even if the problems or gaps are identified finding a better and an efficient revenue model in itself could become a big challenge to crack or the ways to market the services. These are the areas where professional mentorship comes to the rescue to define business models and helps with the much-needed networking and guidance to build and grow the business so that entrepreneurs do not have to learn from mistakes that can be avoided.
Would you like to mention and acknowledge all the support that you have received from the entrepreneur training and mentoring ecosystem?
Yes ofcourse. At the outset I must reiterate that I am the co-founder and this initiative would not have been successful without the support of my co-founder Anshuman Bharali. We have been mentored by Assam Startup (by IIM CIP) and Assam Agri Growth Lab (by CIIE.CO by IIM A). For the uninitiated, IIM CIP stands for Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta Innovation Park. CIIE.CO on the other hand is the name of the accelerator by Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad. Also we have been supported by NRL Ideation with a grant.
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