Tea Trunk, a Goa-based premium tea brand raises $220K at Rebalance accelerator’s inaugural cohort
Tea Trunk is a global premium tea brand based in Goa, that is crafting wellness teas for a new generation of health-conscious consumers.
This startup recently announced that it has raised $220,000 in angel funding led by a group of angels and the Rebalance community.
Founded by Snigdha Manchanda in 2013, Tea Trunk participated in Rebalance accelerator’s inaugural cohort last year. Snigdha Manchanda, Founder at Tea Trunk, said, “We plan to use the funds to expand our product line of health-focused teas, launch more innovative products, and strengthen our positioning in the wellness space – as a functional beverage for daily consumption.”
Tea Trunk has over 200 partners across India. Tea Trunk also claims its teas are popular across 15 countries and the customer base has been growing at a rate of 150 percent, annually. Vikas Kumar and Aishwarya Malhi, co-founders at Rebalance, said, “Snigdha has relentlessly built a profitable company in a challenging consumer brand space. She did this while focusing on a superior product and building a robust team. We are happy that we could help Snigdha navigate through fundraising and actively participate in shaping her company for future growth.”
In October 2019, another global tea brand, Vahdam Teas, received Rs 75 crore ($10,5 million) in Series C funding round led by consumer fund Sixth Sense Ventures. Other players catering to premium tea demand in India include Tea Box, Kettlery, Udyan Tea, and Infinitea among others.
A few of the angels who participated in the fund round for Tea Trunk include Anand Sinha, Global Head at Zomato Gold; Anshul Agarwal, co-head, Consumer, FIG and Business Services at Avendus Capital; Mandar Vaidya, CEO at OYO for South-East Asia and the Middle-East; Puneet Chandra, CEO at Skootr; Rohit Shankar, co-founder at DimDim (acquired by Salesforce); Sorabh Agarwal, ex-MD – Copal Amba (acquired by Moody’s Analytics) and Vaibhav Suri, co-head product and strategy at Delhivery.
Tea Trunk was founded in 2013 by Tea Sommelier Snigdha Manchanda to source teas direct from farmers and craft them into unique blends.
90% of the quality tea in India get exported to other countries, repackaged and then sold back in India as imported goods, at supermarkets. Tea Trunk’s mission is to disrupt this supply chain model due to the socio-economic impact it has and strive to change it by sourcing quality teas from within India and making them available for tea lovers in India. Hence, you may find that their teas are slightly higher on the price point than other competing brands. This is because Tea Trunk doesn’t offer the same quality of teas. ‘You can experience the difference once you’ve tried them,’ states their website.
India produces some of the finest teas in the world but there isn’t a single global tea brand from India. Teak Trunk aspires to become the tea brand of choice in India and take its tea brand worldwide. As a conscious decision, they started as an e-commerce tea store, shipping worldwide from day one.
Manchanda has always been an avid tea lover. At one point, she claims to have owned over 100 rare and exotic teas from China, Japan, Taiwan, Russia, England, Turkey, Greece, Egypt, Kenya etc. “I grew up collecting teas. Friends and family who would travel well would bring back tea as presents,” she says. Despite owning this tea treasure, she knew little about these teas. So in 2011, her passion for tea took her to a professional tea school in Sri Lanka, where she studied under the guidance of Japanese tea master, Nao Kumekawa. During her study, she visited numerous tea gardens, tasted 100 cups of tea a day, and profiled over 2000 varieties of tea. She left Tea School inspired and brimming with stories about tea, and decided to make it her mission to demystify tea-speak. Many tea tastings and workshops followed. The more stories she told, the more she heard. She smiled extra bright when chai-lovers walked over to say that they had never had tea this way. And she wanted more and more people to discover and enjoy good-quality tea. Thus was born Tea Trunk, the name inspired by her father’s vintage trunk and a tribute to where her love of tea began.
“Tea Trunk, the name is inspired by my father’s vintage trunk and a tribute to where my love of tea began,” she remarks. Today her trunk holds gourmet tea blends crafted by her. Tea trunk urges everyone to take your pick, and experience tea like it should be
