We are sitting in the Teabox office in Bangalore, where it’s already summer. Bangalore is not Darjeeling. Nor is it Siliguri, Kaushals hometown, where tea is a way of life, something every other person makes a living from. But Kaushal calls Teabox a tech company, and positioning Teabox as a niche player, selling premium teas from source using tech, has meant that he will straddle two cities, two worlds – the laidback far eastern town of Siliguri that lies at the foot of the Darjeeling hills and a modern, urban Bangalore in southern India.
But that’s not the hard part. Kaushals bigger challenge was in getting people – family and friends – to see what he was talking about when he said teas should bypass the auctions and be sold to the consumer directly, that technology would be the means to it. Most wondered how people would buy tea that they couldn’t touch or smell. Others felt that the auction system worked well enough and why would you want to change it. But Kaushal thought otherwise. The auction process took too long and the teas were no longer fresh by the time it reached the consumer. He could shorten that gap and he knew it was a good thing. The entire supply chain was past its prime with appalling storage conditions and Kaushal was going to modernize it. As for not being able to smell and touch the teas, he was going to do it for the customer by telling them exactly which estate the tea came from, the date of plucking, the tea grade, tasting notes from his team all the information one needed, and certainly much more than they would otherwise get. “It made logical sense,” he says.
The entrepreneurial bug had bitten him but it’s likely that he was already born with it, coming as he does from a long line of entrepreneurs, including his father and uncles and granduncles. His father started in a small town called Sardarshahar in Rajasthan and moved to Kolkata and eventually Siliguri where he set up a business in tea garden supplies. Later, his brother too started a business in tea exports where Kaushal worked briefly and where his idea for Teabox was born.
But before that there were a few businesses that started and ended and he sees them as useful learning ground. This was in Singapore, where Kaushal had moved for his undergrad; he studied Business at Singapore Management University where he started an entrepreneurial society called SMU Ventures. “Four of its members, including myself, run multi-million dollar ventures today,” he adds. The two companies he started had nothing to do with tea; one was an e-waste recycling business and another was an automated luxury limo service for which a friend loaned his Maserati.
It was in Singapore too that he worked briefly for KPMG, his only stint as a non-entrepreneur. “It was useful,” he says. “It taught me to be analytical and structured.” But through this time, India began to beckon. There were opportunities here and Kaushal decided to return home. “I didn’t know at that point what I would do,” he admits. Returning to Siliguri meant readjusting to a small town life. But he liked working with tea and when he started working for his brother, it showed him another side of the tea industry, a view of the business.
The tea industry was not new to Kaushal. He had spent a childhood tagging along with his father to the gardens. He remembers them as a welcome break for him. “Ten minutes out of Siliguri, towards the gardens, the air is fresh and clean,” he says. A mere 20 minutes from Siliguri takes you to a tea garden and then on its to be in the middle of century old gardens, amongst some of the most prized tea plants, sniffing and tasting tea that can cost, well, less than a Maserati but nearly as much as an Audi.
He was well known as his father’s son and so the managers agreed to sell their teas to him, despite their misgivings about the Internet and online shopping. He managed to wangle a 30-day credit period and began what was to be a precursor to Teabox, a company called Darjeeling Tea Xpress (DTX) that would sell premium loose leaf Darjeeling teas online. “I had a one-room office and one staff,” he says, not without pride. His days would begin at crack of dawn when he would head for the gardens, visit 5-6 of them, taste several teas, make his selection and bring them back in his car. Back in the office, they would be announced online and as soon as orders came in, he would pack and prepare them for shipping.
Probably as significant about this period was his marriage. “Starting a new company and getting married at the same time is not something I would recommend,” says Kaushal, adding that DTX demanded all his time and attention. Much as his wife, Prachi, supported him, it is time lost that he rues. Prachi became a part of Kaushal’s team, bringing in design skills. She reworked his packaging, came up with the name Teabox and took charge of the design, freeing Kaushal to focus on operations. Darjeeling Tea Xpress became Teabox, selling premium teas from not just Darjeeling but from Assam, the Nilgiris, Sikkim, Kangra and even Nepal.
The next step to scaling was to have investors and a team. “Siliguri didn’t offer a talent pool,” he says, talking about how he outsourced his work to freelancers worldwide, including customer support in the Philippines, social media in Kenya, tech in Ahmedabad, accounting in Delhi and order processing in Jaipur. It was time to make some changes. Accel Partners came in as an investor and with that, Kaushal opened his second office in Bangalore and set up a tech and marketing team.
The tea industry in India has a long way to go before things will change significantly. It’s a billion dollar industry and Kaushal’s Teabox is not yet seen as a threat to the old ways. Mostly, theres pride among Siliguris residents that one of their own has made it. Among them is Kaushal’s father who enjoys online shopping these days. I ask him how different father and son are, as entrepreneurs. “I’d like to think that like him I too am frugal and with the ability to persevere, to create something from nothing. He had better work-life balance than I do. He was content with a steady, consistent growth. For me, technology has enabled a bigger dream. I have bigger ambitions.”
Photograph by Gautam Virprashad
