Sipping Tea the right way and saving the environment. How? Techies Time to Tea Teaches us.
Editorial Note: Sunita and her team went through all the ups and downs that every successful business has to face before seeing the light. And thanks to their strong professional and international experience, they are now an established Tea brand from India that educates people around the world about Tea, its benefits and its rituals, while in parallel empowering the Indian independent Tea market, and removing plastic from their facilities. Too good to be true? Not at all, just read about them and be amazed.
Source: Techies Time to Tea
Sunita Kour, Co-Founder & CEO of Techies Time to Tea Switzerland
Source: Techies Time to Tea
Q: What is your vision for a more sustainable world?
A: Zero Waste and healthier eating and drinking habits. We wish to change the drinking habits of our consumers from aerated beverages, preservative based drinks, caffeinated beverages to Tea. We believe that this approach helps to promote a much healthier lifestyle in a sustainable manner. We support our communities in India by purchasing directly from Small Tea Growers and women farmers, and we also support small businesses that cultivate spices without the use of pesticides by purchasing the additional products that we need from them.
Q: What was your first step towards building a better world?
A: We started by educating the masses about the health benefits of Teas and also by enforcing clay pots to serve Tea, rather than pouring it into plastic and paper disposables. Tea is bundled with tons of benefits for the human body and bringing awareness to this fact by slowly increasing the consumption of Teas through our Tea Rooms is our ultimate goal.
Q: What challenges did you face?
A: Our main hurdles were finding potential locations for our store, empowering the workers we hired from remote areas by training them about Teas, and the ways it can be consumed and served. Pricing has always been a concern as Indian consumers prefer better products at cheaper prices. Hence convincing the consumers that the product offered was worth the price has been a challenge in India.
Q: How did you overcome your biggest challenge(s)?
A: We overcame the challenges slowly by ongoing education of our workers and upgrading their skills. Our Team members have always been our strength and their support to continuously improve the product, as well as our services, has helped us come a long way. Our location searches started getting easier ever since we took the path of expansion as the brand gained increased visibility, and it slowly became a brand of choice by retailers among all self-funded Tea brands. With the increased visibility and proven quality and services, pricing started going unnoticed and expectations from consumers kept increasing from the brand creating a need for strong brand positioning and marketing thorough funding.
Q: What is your biggest achievement so far?
Source: Techies Time to Tea
A: Our Products are acknowledged by our customers in Switzerland demonstrating good scope and demand. This is an achievement for us as an Indian brand which did not take longer to get recognized in new countries because of all the groundwork that went in through 5 years of inception.
Q: What keeps you moving forward?
A: The quality of our products and our Zero Waste initiative brings in much inspiration for the successful path ahead.
Q: What are the biggest lessons you have learnt?
A: Every business takes time and we must continue learning from all pitfalls and keep on improving utilizing the lessons from our time before success to the max.
Q: What’s next?
A: We are working on creating a slightly modified version of the brand by incorporating Ayurveda in our new Product line for the Swiss and European markets. To make this happen, it is a must to secure funding to make sure that a proper marketing strategy is developed and implemented to position the brand correctly.