The skies above Assam’s eastern districts are a bright blue. It is mid-December, and the air is balmy. Sailen Pukon welcomes me into the veranda of his mud-thatch home. The house is surrounded by his tea gardens. We sit on wooden chairs and talk about the business of growing tea. Small sounds of mid-morning domestic activity come in from behind the curtained doorway. Birds chirp and a flower bush in the front yard sways in the breeze.

Latumoni Tea, Sailen’s small 15-acre tea garden, is named after the village. Deep inside the rural part of the Dibrugarh district, the village comprises of a few houses near Tingkhong town. This region, skirting the mighty Brahmaputra, is highly fertile. While paddy dominates the land in the other parts of Assam, here in the northeastern areas, tea rules. The green bushes carpet both sides of the road for miles. Shade trees with their lean trunks stand sporadically through the stretch of the plantations. Locally known as Koroi, these trees of the Albizzia genus help in increasing the soil quality with their roots. The canopy provides much-needed shade for the workers working in the hot tropical environment.

Unlike the hill lands of Darjeeling and Nilgiris, well-known for their tea estates, the tea plantations in upper Assam are on the plains. The state of Assam is the world's largest tea-growing region by production. Assam tea, grown in these tropics has a brisk, malty flavour, and bright colour. ‘Our tea is strong,’ laughs Sailen punching the air with his fist. He promises to serve me tea from the leaves in his garden but only after I agree to accept his request for lunch.

The rural warmth and hospitality aside, Sailen is articulate and self-assured. He is forward-looking too. A first-generation tea grower, he used to make a living by selling his naturally grown green leaves to the nearby inorganic CTC factories[1] until 2015, when he began his collaboration with a start-up The Tea Leaf Theory (TTLT) founded by Upamanyu Borokoty. ‘Wholesale prices of tea leaves have decreased drastically over the years; it is not sustainable anymore to supply tea to large buyers.[2] I realised that to survive we need to work in a different way.’

Upamanyu’s TTLT has been a big support to Sailen. The company has helped him improve the quality of his tea and provides better rates for the produce. Several farmers like Sailen have benefitted from association with TTLT. Upamanyu’s venture has been working with several small tea growers in Assam with a vision to place Assam’s tea among the best in the world.

Empowering the small organic tea farmer is a part of the company’s mission. The company helps them set up micro-factories for processing tea leaves or upgrade the infrastructure in case the farmer already has one. The final produce is professionally graded and tasted by TTLT at its own cost and bought from the farmer at a fair price.  An MBA from Delhi, Upamanyu belongs to Assam’s Sivasagar’s town. His venture has successfully built a community of organic farmers across Assam over the past six-seven years. The single-origin, rare crafted, limited batch, teas from the small farms are supplied to several tea boutiques in Europe and America today. The company, however, is not just a tea exporter.

Several farmers like Sailen are a part of what Upamanyu calls ‘research-based small holder's tea sourcing platform'. He explains that these experimental stations are set up to help farmers produce the finest craft teas.

One such processing station is at Sailen’s home. He takes me to his little factory behind the house. It comprises two rooms and a covered courtyard. The machines are basic and most of the processing is done manually. ‘This is a micro-processing unit,’ Sailen points to the improvised machinery he uses to process the tea. ‘It is jugaad,’ he laughs referring to the Indian method of using ingenious workarounds that cost much less than established methods. Jugaad as a system of solving business problems is applauded as much as it is derided. Appreciated for being creative, jugaad gets scorned for being a careless shortcut.  Often a necessity arising out of India’s social realities, like here at Latumoni, the machines may seem primitive, but the output is at par. Sailen’s means may be frugal, but his product is world-class.

Stocked at high-end tea boutiques in UK and Germany, Latumoni tea features among the best.  ‘Just a few searches on "Latumoni Assam Tea" on Google will validate our claim,’ Upamanyu tells me later. The tea processed at Sailen’s small factory features in blogs and websites of well-known speciality tea connoisseurs. A tea from Sailen’s farm categorised as Latumoni Royal Tippy Assam Second Flush Black Tea has been described as a ‘black full-bodied taste with pronounced chocolate and coffee notes embedded in spicy sweetness’. Latumoni tea also asserts its geographical identity, say the aficionados, calling out the specific character of the mineral-earthy composition in the taste.

Like many artisanal teas, the tea leaves from Latumoni unfold fully when brewed. Upamanyu tells me that the taste is delicate. There is no trace of the bitter aftertaste of regular commercial teas. I talk about my experience with green tea from big brands. ‘Oh, the green tea bags available in office pantries are hell,’ laughs Upamanyu.

The exquisite flavours are a result of a keen focus on the production process. Every step from picking to roasting and rolling is done according to the set standard. High-quality tea seems to need both the persistence of an artist and the ingenuity of a businessman. Upamanyu has both.

Upamanyu founded The Tea Leaf Theory (TTLT) in 2015 with Anshuman Bharali, a childhood friend. ‘It is a rather unusual venture, even for Assam known as a tea-growing state. Most businesspeople here are contractors in the coal and oil business,’ Upamanyu tells me. Both of the founders have no background in the tea business. Though tea estates abound, Upamanyu had never been inside a tea estate, or seen how the leaves are processed. ‘I had no access to the high society of the tea trade in Assam’. Tea in Assam is a colonial-era industry. It is dominated by large tea plantations with big factories and producing or selling tea is not seen as a possible business venture.

Any kind of business, in fact, was far removed from Upamanyu’s life when he was growing up in Sivasagar. His parents were professors in the local college, and Upamanyu followed the track most middle-class children pursue in Assam. He left Sivasagar after his 12^th standard to study at the University of Delhi and then did an MBA from IMT, Ghaziabad, a top college in the national capital region.

TTLT happened much later. It was only after he had worked for many years in big multinational corporations in Delhi in the brand marketing field that he began toying with the idea of coming back to Assam. Tea was still not a part of the plan.

The thought of working in the tea trade came to Upamanyu first during a trip to China in 2013. He was astonished to see that tea in that country was not the homely beverage people gulped back at home. It was a sophisticated drink people sipped with meals, like wine. Despite belonging to India’s largest tea-growing state, Upamanyu had never seen such a range of elegant teas. ‘Could tea be the business opportunity in Assam he was looking for?’ It was a far-fetched thought at the time but the notion of doing something so deeply connected to his homeland was attractive.

Upamanyu quit his job in Dec 2014. Along with Anshuman, who was a childhood friend, he set up a manufacturing facility for optical lenses in Sivasagar. Anshuman’s family had an optical store in the town, and they thought it best to begin the entrepreneurial journey with something familiar. While the business was successful, Upamanyu continued to nurture a desire to start up a venture that could positively impact local livelihoods.

The foray into tea began with an unexpected meeting in 2015. At a local grocery store for an errand, Upamanyu saw a tea farmer trying to convince the store owner to stock a few packets of his green tea. Upamanyu learnt that the farmer had processed the tea in his small one-room factory. ‘I spoke to the man and bought a few packets. I was amazed to see the leaves open-up when I brewed them. It tasted great too.’ Upamanyu hadn’t seen this kind of tea anywhere else in Assam. His marketing experience kicked in. ‘Here we had people growing specialty tea in our backyard and no one knew about it. I saw a gap in the market that needed to be addressed and The Tea Leaf Theory was born.’

The two founders decided to allocate some revenues from the optical business into a new venture in high-quality tea. Upamanyu was keen to make his business socially relevant and collaborate with small organic tea farmers in Assam and adjoining areas of Meghalaya and Darjeeling. The duo met several such tea growers in the next few months. ‘I was interested in knowing the people as human beings and not just suppliers. I wanted to know the motivations behind their pursuit to grow organically. Why did they go organic when the whole street was spraying chemicals?’ 

The state of Assam has the largest number of small tea growers in India. While large tea estates produce commercial tea at their in-house factories, independent farms of varying sizes have adopted natural farming practices. Some because they are too small and poor to afford pesticides and chemical fertilizers and some because they have suffered the harmful effects of chemicals. Upamanyu found out that despite the tea leaves being organic, the lack of access to consumers who would pay for organic tea leaves meant that the farmers end up selling them wholesale to large tea factories for a pittance.

The proposition of buying organic tea from the farmers, processing it, and selling it for a profit was attractive but Upamnyu did not want to become another middleman. He aspired to build a community of organic farmers. TTLT was founded with the purpose of helping small tea growers become farmer-entrepreneurs by providing them with skills to produce international quality fine tea and finding a market for their produce.

TTLT set out to create a new segment for Assam’s tea, a range of specialty teas for discerning consumers. ‘And that's how, you know, we started shortlisting some of the some of the most enterprising farmers on our list and set up small specialty tea factories.’

Producing specialty tea is not easy. In my conversations with Sailen and Upamanyu, I learnt that growing organic tea shrubs is only one part of the process. The leaves must be plucked at the right time and then processed in small batches. Upamanyu says that the little steps make a difference. ‘How we play around with the oxidations and roll the leaf change the quality of the finished product. We can produce three or four different types of black teas from the leaves of one garden,’ he says. Handcrafted by the tea growers themselves and produced with minimal mechanical intervention makes the tea unique and flavourful.

While most farmers that TTLT partners with already have small production units, to ensure quality output the company trains the farmer, invests in upgrading the machinery and watches over the process for 10 days. The company selects the final product produced by the farmer based on the orders. ‘We shortlist the batch according to our clients’ requirements. The evaluation process is stringent. ‘Currently, our rejection rate is 2 to 3%. It used to be around 60 to 70%,’ says Upamanyu. His support of the farmers and collaborative approach have helped them become better at making the tea.

TTLT’s inputs also help farmers become better at managing their operations. ‘We have started to give them targets on production.’ This has ensured that farmers are able to produce better output. The efficiency not only makes them more profitable but also helps increase employment. ‘Once associated with TTLT as a tea entrepreneur, a farmer makes three times the revenue than what he would if he continued to sell the plucked tea leaves to the CTC factories,’ says Upamanyu with satisfaction.

The initiative also helps sustain the organic revolution by supporting more farmers to become self-sustainable entrepreneurs and raise their living standards. ‘It is a movement of sorts. We started with a vision and now we can see it being realised. Now, this has to spread.’ 

Over the past six years, TTLT has been able to successfully fulfill the demand for high-quality Assamese tea in the international tea market. China, Taiwan and Japan, however, continue to dominate the export market. Upamanyu says that the lack of a steady supply with consistent quality has kept Assam tea out of the race. ‘Buyers purchase directly from the small farmers in some countries. They tried it in Assam, but it did not work out. With our commitment and passion, Assam tea has been able to make a dent in the global market.’

With demand exceeding supply, the company is planning to scale up substantially in 2022. TTLT has begun to onboard many new farmers. ‘Many are desperate to meet their ends and have been struggling a lot since the pandemic,’ says Upamanyu. 

The success of TTLT in the export market gave Upamanyu and Anshuman the confidence to go after the domestic market. They have begun to develop a product assortment for Indian consumers. Will the exotic range work for the Indian market used to the regular low-grade tea brewed with lots of milk and sugar? Upamanyu believes a market for his kind of fine tea surely exists. He tells me that specialty tea is a niche market everywhere, including the West. Only 1% of the tea-drinking population buys teas from tea boutiques in the developed markets too. Even in the West, most people buy tea from general grocery stores. His focus in India is not just on the informed consumer who buys fine tea but also on expanding the market. ‘How do we move people from regular tea to high quality? How do we make this shift to specialty teas easy and convenient for consumers?’

The answer to these questions is a ‘dip’ style tea made for the Indian market by TTLT. An outcome of experiments for almost two years Truedips, a patent-pending technology that helps compress freshly plucked leaves in a tablet form and tie them in a bunch. The tablet unfurls to its original state when dipped in boiling water. Marketed by the brand name Woolah tea, this top-notch tea comes in black, green, immunity and detox varieties, 12 in a box. Woolah is the anglicised version of ‘ulah’, an Assamese word meaning happiness. ‘The idea was to let consumers see what they sip, the finest quality of two leaves and a bud (unopened leaf at the tip of a branch) in their pristine state, without being encased in potentially harmful tea bags,’ says Upamanyu.

With younger people looking at flavourful green or black tea as a beverage both for taste and health, the idea is promising. Woolah lets everyone can indulge in the exotic taste of specialty. ‘We are a tea-drinking culture and so I feel there is much scope for this kind of tea, and we want to make it convenient to buy and consume high-quality tea,’ Upamanyu says. To reach the consumer, TTLT plans to sell both online and through high-end food stores in metro cities. There are also plans to develop a network of distributors both in India, Europe, and North America.

As ambitious plans brew in Upamanyu’s office in Shivsagar, at Sailen’s farm, most days unfold predictably. The day, I am there, tea-pickers go about their work, and I sit down for a hearty home-cooked lunch in the yard overlooking the gardens. Sailen’s wife brings in the tea. The taste is unmistakably delicate in both the black and green samples I drink at Sailen’s home. Sailen looks on as I sip. His eyes twinkle. ‘There is no going back to regular tea now.’

[1] CTC tea actually refers to a method of processing black tea. Named for the process, "crush, tear, curl" (and sometimes called "cut, tear, curl") in which black tea leaves are run through a series of cylindrical rollers. The rollers produce small, hard pellets made of tea.

2 After tea was liberalised in the 90s, many people in Assam began growing tea. The number of small tea growers is very high and so supply is more than demand. The large factories negotiate price in auctions.