The most generally consumed refreshment on the planet close to water, Tea is still to a great extent produced and distributed much as it was two centuries ago, often at the expense of freshness. Teabox, a Siliguri-based startup catering to a worldwide market of tea lovers by bringing the fresh tea leaves straight from the estates to the consumer in no time.
About Teabox and Its Specialty
By fusing tea with technology, Kaushal Dugar, founder and CEO of Teabox, is transforming the practices around tea production and distribution. It brings the freshness of tea leaves straight from the farm to the consumer’s cup within days after it is picked. The startup majorly focuses on providing customers with more approachable ways to explore different varieties, regions, and flavours of tea just like wine.
The startup deals on the vertical integration of sourcing, branding, and distribution of teas. By infusing family’s teachings of the old tea trade with technology and new ways of doing business, Kaushal Dugar created India’s first global tea brand.
Best Quality and Marketing Strategy
Teabox’s major source of producing tea is from Darjeeling, Assam, Nilgiris in Tamilnadu and Nepal. It took the basic idea of using the online platform for selling tea as it is done for coffee and wines. This strategy aimed to reduce the time from production to consumption and hence provides tea in its purest form without any intermediaries. With having over 200 variants of tea including Punjabi masala and Kolkata Street chai, the startup is very famous at an international level, amongst the coffee drinking market.
The startup took the inspiration from the rich and visual history of tea production, including the colonial-era typography that is still very much prevalent in tea crates. The simplicity of the Teabox website lies in its accessibility with easy-to-use format, quickly giving out information about the incredible range of teas. Teabox also provides its consumers with the opportunity to select their own tea combinations by taking up its subscriptions.
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The simplicity of the Teabox website lies in its accessibility with easy-to-use format, quickly giving out information about the incredible range of teas.
What Differentiates Teabox from the others in the Market?
Teabox is a direct-to-consumer e-commerce tea startup that cuts down the supply chain and makes it a simpler and faster process.
- It uses a fairly straightforward model of sourcing the highest quality tea directly from the tea estates and delivering it to the consumers within 5-7 business days.
- The startup has an in-built software that maps every step from procurement of tea from the tea estate to delivering it to the customer.
- Providing customers with a subscription-based service where they can taste different varieties before settling on their favorites is another great strategy.
- They also provide customers with “TeaPacs”, transforming a 50-year-old invention of tea bags. Unlike teabags, TeaPacs are infused with nitrogen gas to keep tea fresh as much as possible.
- Its modern and minimalistic packaging includes loose tea leaves well preserved with natural nitrogen flush that locks down the freshness of the leaves.
Insights For Startups in the Tea Selling Space
As the industry has picked up a substantial raise in the lockdown, tea has become the healthier beverage with antiviral properties. The use of a digital platform for selling tea, Teabox, has created a niche for buyers, providing them a brand-new experience of ordering and tasting a variety of teas.
Teabox also educates customers through its platform providing them knowledge about the specialty teas in India and giving the valued customers a chance of ‘experiential’ tea-drinking, a shift from the traditional way of tea consumption.
