For Assam is so well-known for tea and tea gardens, entrepreneurship has developed over time on this subject at large. Now, tea in Assam takes a granular form and sheds ‘orthodoxy’, although it took a century to happen!
Upamanyu Borkakoty and Anshuman Bharali are two childhood friends. Back in 2015, they had formed The Tea Leaf Theory (TTLT), a research-based tea sourcing platform for small organic tea farmers.
In August, they applied for a patent for their technology that had taken off from where another experiment to take the bitterness out of Indian green tea had ended. Also, they launched the product a few days ago through Woolah Tea, TTLT’s post-pandemic retail wing.
Following a patent-pending technology that helps freshly-plucked leaves be compressed and tied in a bunch for unfurling to their actual form in boiling water, their experiments for almost two years have yielded Truedips.
“The specialty tea market has premium and luxury brands. We wanted to build a happy, fun, quirky and contemporary brand in the world of organic teas, and the first step was to ditch the conventional tea bags, most of which release harmful micro-plastic particles when dipped,” Mr. Borkakoty has been quoted as saying to the media.
He added, “One just needs to pour boiling water over the leaves in a cup and let them take their true shape after 4-5 minutes of dipping. The same bunch can be used for a few cups more by adding boiling water.”
He further added, “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.”
It may be mentioned that Assam accounts for nearly 55% of India’s tea production and is widely known across the world for this uniquity.