The story of Made in India brand Vahdam Teas

Founded in 2015 by Bala Sarda at the age of 23, the New Delhi-based tea brand now sells in over 104 countries.

Thursday March 04, 2021 , 4 min Read

Good morning!

Where do you source your morning chai from?

For most Indians, our morning doesn’t begin without a steaming cup of tea. India’s favourite beverage has a strong aroma, which when accentuated by the zing from various spices is enough to wake us up from our slumber and boost our immunity.

In recent years, India’s Darjeeling tea has made a name for itself in the global market, with UK brand Twinings Tea and Starbucks subsidiary Teavana boasting of the Indian flavour to their customers.

But there was a need for a homegrown tea brand making an impact globally. Enter Vahdam Teas. Founded in 2015 by Bala Sarda at the age of 23, the New Delhi-based tea brand now sells in over 104 countries.

Vahdam Teas started with loose-leaf teas, including black tea, green tea, oolong tea, white tea, etc. Now, it has ventured into 175 SKUs, including pyramid-tea bags, superfoods, gift sets, assortments, teaware, and drinkware.

And guess what? Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Mariah Carey, Martha Stewart, and Chris Pratt, among others, swear by it as well.

The Interview

Most Indians tend to buy gold in the jewellery form and typically take a lot of pride in owning it. The act of pawning gold for cash has traditionally been looked at as something that tends to hurt one’s pride. Kochi-based Muthoot Finance, the world’s largest gold financing company, knew it was essential to address this taboo and eliminate the so-called shame and embarrassment surrounding gold loans.

George Alexander Muthoot, Managing Director, Muthoot Finance, says the company explained to its customers that they can move the gold from their locker to Muthoot’s locker, and avail gold loans safely and securely, whenever they needed some liquidity.

Editor’s Pick: 100X Entrepreneur Podcast

It’s been a long and extremely interesting journey for Nishith Rastogi, Co-Founder and CEO of Locus.sh. After graduating from BITS Pilani and launching RideSafe, a real-time route deviation detection application for women’s safety, to establishing Locus — a supply chain intelligence and logistics planning startup — every stage has been stimulating and filled with learnings. In this episode of 100X Entrepreneur Podcast, Nishith talks about his entrepreneurial journey, and why he went from launching a B2C app RideSafe, to a B2B solution. Read more.

Startup Spotlight

A 7-month-old coding startup that made it to Y Combinator’s Winter Batch ’21

Vivek Prakash knows a thing or two about building online communities. As the Co-founder and CTO of HackerEarthsince 2012, the IIT Roorkee alumnus built and nurtured a four million-strong community of developers and programmers from all over the world. But from 2019 onwards, Vivek was on the lookout for his next big idea, and the K-12 education space in India caught his attention.

He quit HackerEarth in January 2020 and set up Codingal Educationin July 2020. The Bengaluru-based startup offers a live platform for K-12 students to learn coding and STEM subjects in a fun manner. Read more.

Codingal founders — *Vivek Prakash (L) and Satyam Baranwal, Co-founders, Codingal*

News & Updates

Twitter is rolling out Spaces — an audio chat feature — to select Android users globally, including India. Twitter had been testing the Clubhouse-like feature for iPhone users previously.

Gurugram-based logistics unicorn Delhivery has acquired Primaseller, a SaaS startup focused on omnichannel retailers, for an undisclosed value. Primaseller allows businesses to manage inventory and orders across channels in a more efficient manner.

India-focussed investment management firm Bay Capital has become the latest overseas fund to invest in PB Fintech, the holding company of Policybazaar. It has completed a secondary transaction, ahead of Policybazaar's plans to launch an IPO in the next 12-15 months.

Oye! Rickshaw announced the launch of its battery swapping platform, targeting to deploy 10,000 lithium-ion batteries by the end of 2021. The startup, which started a battery swapping pilot project in December 2020, said it crossed one lakh swap kilometres in under three months.

Bengaluru-based Intugine Technologies will work with the Andhra Pradesh government to ensure the distribution of the COVID-19 vaccine across the state. The logistics technology provider will use portable GPS devices to facilitate real-time tracking of vaccines in transit.