From the garden to the cup

Bala Sarda, the founder and CEO of Vahdam Teas, talks about how his four-year-old company eliminates middlemen to bring freshest and best quality Indian teas to its clients worldwide.

- Debarati Chakraborty

WHEN BALA SARDA JOINED his 80-year-old family tea export business, he was appalled to see how teas passed through multiple middlemen and it took nearly 8-10 months for a pack of tea to reach the consumer, by which time its prime freshness and flavour were lost.

Having been tasting teas under his father’s supervision for years, Sarda was introduced to different tea varieties even before he started his company, Vahdam Teas, and this not only piqued his interest in tea but also helped to tremendously understand the product side of the trade.

The business of tea

A crucial problem faced by Indian tea growers is that even though India produces some of the finest teas in the world, the absence of home-grown brands often forces the tea industry to be dependent on bulk tea exports to foreign brands. Such brands do not hesitate to shift to poor-quality teas from other tea growing regions and countries, in order to compete on price points and earn higher profit margins, as soon as farmers in India increase their prices. Sarda launched Vahdam Teas in 2015 to solve these problems and bring to the world the amazing teas that India has to offer.