“Buy India’s Finest Specialty Teas Online”
Startup origins often have interesting backstories. When it comes to food, the reasons range from creating a space that caters to a favourite product, to making a product that fills a particular void. But when you talk to someone like Teamonk Global‘s CEO and Managing Director Ashok Mittal, you realize that this question is irrelevant. For someone who is, as the Teamonk Global website says, “steeped in tea”, a platform that provides the finest range of specialty tea products was always the plan. Over a phone call, I spoke to Ashok Mittal about the venture, staying in the tea business for over four decades, and about the best tea to have depending on the time of the day. Meet Teamonk Global.
A Tea Story
Ashok Mittal’s journey with tea began as a management trainee in the Tea division at Lipton. Understanding the trade from scratch, he is trained in tea tasting, blending, and has worked in tea manufacturing as well as quality control. He then went onto head different divisions in the tea industry, including heading domestic operations for Unilever Indonesia and working as Director – Foods for Unilever, Vietnam. He has also consulted tea companies on various aspects of the business.
@teamonkglobal visits #TYT to talk about tea, entrepreneurship and knowing what to drink when! Click To Tweet“The idea was always there,” Ashok Mittal said when I asked him how he decided that it was time to establish a venture of his own. “I did have a good career path. But deep down, I always wanted to create something of my own. An old colleague suggested that we build an online speciality tea business, and I was immediately interested. We started in a small way and slowly built a team. Bit by bit we grew, and now after two years, I can say confidently that we survived the tough tides.”
The idea took shape in March 2016, he shares, and just in four months, Teamonk Global was up and running. “We shipped our first online order on 1st August 2016. For a year, we were doing beta testing with an online focus and a few corporate gift orders. Slowly we decided to bring our products to other portals like Amazon, Flipkart, Big Basket, etc. Now, we are much more aware of what works for us. Online is our key focus. Offline, we focus on corporate gifting, and we are present selectively in a few cities through shop in shop kiosks.“
The Tea Store
Teamonk Global’s website has a range of products classified as “Detox”, “Energy”, “Weight Care”, “Glow” and “Relax”. Ashok Mittal shares that 90% of their tea comes from the mountains of Darjeeling, and Nilgris. “In Nilgiris, we have a dedicated tea factory, wherein we use a steaming process to rupture the cells of the tea leaves. This highlights the tea’s natural flavours. When you mix other ingredients, the flavours get carefully embedded into the tea. It is a special kind of plant dedicated to us. The practices that we follow are some of the best. In Darjeeling, we have tied up with a processing facility to make the tea in their special units as per our requirements,” he explains. Some of their tea also comes from the Assam region.
For Teamonk Global, flavours play a key role in ensuring that green tea is an active choice for consumers who are convinced about its health benefits, but wary of taking that sip in the name of taste. “Most of us have grown up on the milk and sugar tea, the quintessential chai. But there is a fast-growing trend towards healthy options. Youngsters, especially, are very health conscious. They are aware of the benefits that green tea provides. The whole challenge for us was to make green tea more palatable, more delicious, and more enjoyable. We did not want people to drink it for the sake of it,” he shares.
Teamonk Global has definitely made sure that people are not sipping their green tea, simply because they have to. Their website is home to 15 different tea varieties, and flavours that range from spices like cardamom, pepper, spearmint, peppermint and even fruity flavours like orange. “The unit is Nilgiris is like our R&D centre as well, where we keep on experimenting tea with different flavors. Our goal is that the flavours should not be just blends- we don’t want to simply add cardamom for example. For us, it has to be part of the process.” All the Teamonk products are long leaves, and are enclosed in pyramid-shaped tea bags that swell up when dipped in water and release the flavours.
Consumer favourites include Oolong tea, white tea, ginger variants and the Kashmiri Khawa.
Entrepreneurship
Entrepreneurship is a tough game, says the tea expert, and his advice to anyone trying to step into the food industry is to be prepared for risks involved. “It’s great to talk about ideas and set lofty goals. But only when you get down to it, do you realize the extent of challenges, the uncertainties, and the market dynamics. One should be fully aware of the downside, and there has to be a plan B, ready.” He also emphasises the importance of making mistakes and learning from them. “Because of experience and a cautious approach, we have learnt a lot at a minimal cost. That, I think is very important. To explore with caution.“
It would not be possible for me to end this interview without getting a cheat sheet for which tea to have when. “Morning and evening, it’s best to go for an oolong. They have a bit of black tea taste, while the soul is green. A perfect hybrid. Post dinner, white tea is the best choice. It is the most sophisticated form of green tea with a high antioxidant content, and white tea is low on caffeine. So your sleep won’t be disturbed.”
It looks like we have all the information we need, to the “TEA”. All we have to do now is visit Teamonk Global and pick the right product for us.
Featured Image Courtesy Teamonk Global Facebook Page
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