Indian man returns from New Zealand, plans to sell tea that will go upto Rs 1 crore

Jagdish Kumar at his tea stall, King of Street, Connaught Place. The upcoming premium tea lounge, which is still under construction, will offer the beverage at a staggeringly high price, starting with Rs 500 and going up to a crore. Pics/Nishad Alam

In 2018, while listening to a speech by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, New Zealand-based Jagdish Kumar had a moment of epiphany: he wanted to return to India and sell chai. He duly wrapped up his hotel business in Wellington, packed his bags and returned to Delhi. After starting a small stall in Manish Nagar, Nagpur, he eventually upgraded to a larger shop in Noida, Sector 63, where he began serving 35 variants of tea, including adrak elaichi wali chai, cutting chai, kadak chai, tandoori chai, along with gimmicky variants like mummy ke haath wali chai, mardo wali chai and corporate chai. The business reportedly clocked in a turnover of Rs 1.8 crore within a year.

Three years later, Kumar is taking his love for tea a notch higher. His upcoming tea lounge in Delhi will offer the beverage at a staggeringly high price, starting with Rs 500 and going up to a crore. The tea will be made using what he claims is some of the most expensive produce in the world and will be accompanied by a host of luxury offerings. For instance, the most expensive option on the menu, Diamond Imperial tea (Rs 1 crore) will come with two Rolex watches, a three-night stay in Paris, diamond bracelet and pendant, and champagne. "It's essentially a combo for couples looking for a luxury wedding," he says. Less extravagant varieties in the range of Rs 12,000 include Chayi Ba Hel (Persian cardamom tea) and Kuşburnu Cayı (Turkish rose). There's also panda dung tea (Rs 2 lakh), pegged to be one of the world's most expensive infusions at over 200 dollars per cup. According to reports, An Yanshi, a 41-year-old entrepreneur from Sichuan Province of China began growing the tea using the excrement from pandas living in nearby breeding centres. The excrement was apparently chosen for its health benefits since pandas eat only wild bamboo and absorb around only 30 per cent of their nutrients, leaving their dung rich.

Kumar says he wants to offer an "experience" where the centrepiece will be a pot of tea. The reason behind his return to India was admittedly to elevate chai's status. "It [tea] is underrated and underestimated. Influenced by the West, we think of coffee as the new status symbol. But, tea is still a poor man's drink, and we still have the organic tea culture, which is a mainstay of the rich.

Kumar comes with 22 years of experience in the hospitality sector. Despite this, when he came to India he felt like a rookie starting all over again. "I thought India would be an easy market to crack, but it wasn't. I travelled across the country to understand the tea business, focusing on Assam, for being the hub for tea plantations. I had to use all my sales skill to convince people to at least sample the teas so that I could get a sense of what's working. As I built a larger portfolio, big projects and collaborations followed." His decision to focus solely on tea is because it's a drink that Indians can't do without. "India has such a robust tea drinking culture. Our day starts with a cuppa and ends with it too. The ritual transcends class and culture."

According to estimates, the country consumes 8,37,000 tonnes of it every year. That said, his café in Connaught Place, will continue serving affordable tea too, with prices starting at Rs 10. During the pandemic, Kumar says he concocted the yog maya chai, made with 35 herbs. Striking when the iron is hot is clearly Kumar's motto.

India's tea barons

Wagh Bakri: A follower of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi, Narandas Desai, bought a 500-acre tea estate in South Africa, but was forced to abandon it in the wake of ethnic unrest. In 1915, Desai fled South Africa and returned to India with a letter from Mahatma Gandhi vouching for his skills and honesty in the tea business. In 1934, Desai started selling the tea under the brand, Wagh Bakri for the first time. The group entered the packaged tea segment in 1980, led by the third generation of Desai family. Cracking the market was far from easy as people were sceptical about the quality of packaged tea as they were accustomed to loose tea. Marketing experts say the brand's logo conveyed social equality in tune with the founder's philosophy. It features a picture of wagh (the tiger represents upper class) and bakri (the goat represents lower class) drinking tea from the same cup.

Society Tea: Hiravan Pranjivandas started as a tea wholesaler in 1924 in Masjid Bunder's famous Chai Galli. In 1933, he launched Hasmukhrai & Co, with a shop in Kalbadevi. By the late '80s, the brand had become the market leader in the tea industry in Mumbai. However, sensing the need to change traditional tea buying patterns and attract a younger audience, they launched the beverage in a packet form in '91 in the name of Society Tea. It essentially meant tea transcends all boundaries of age and gender. The makers chose the classic blue colour over red (popular among advertisers as it is said to encourage appetite and stimulate urgency) to convey security and productivity. Karan Shah, the fourth generation director of Society Tea, helms the company, and despite its robust offline presence, the brand is active on platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

Marvel Tea: Years before Marvel Tea was even named, Parveen Jain, its managing director, spent the first half of his twenties travelling the length and breadth of India to meet dealers and distributors to forge solid partnerships that were to last decades. The alliances were establish a network for his tea brand. The Marvel Tea Estate was established in 1994, and within the first five years, the tea had reached the markets of Haryana, Punjab, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Chandigarh, Delhi NCR, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand. Today, it is one of the largest tea brands in the country, and the production facility in Uklana is a fully automated state-of-the-art unit, where the tea leaves aren't touched by a single pair of hands during their journey from procurement to packet.

Rate card

Rs 12,000
Chayi Ba Hel (Persian cardamom tea)

Rs 2,00,000
Panda dung tea

Rs 250
Corporate chai