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This year India's tea industry has finally begun fighting back. The central government has promised $1.16 billion over the next 15 years in loans and subsidies for new, more productive plantings. Copying the clever marketing of tea producers in Sri Lanka and Africa, Indian entrepreneurs have begun to build their own upscale brands. Some producers, meanwhile, are branching out into tea bars for the subcontinent's free-spending young professionals. India's tea producers may never recapture the glory days, but they'll need a new strategy to survive into the future...
Using a strategy that has worked well for Sri Lankan producers like Dilmah, Indian firms are taking their teas straight to consumers by marketing directly online. Assam Co. also opened the popular Camellia chain in Kolkata (formerly Calcutta) this year, and Soongachi Industries has launched Infinitea, a hip, upmarket tea bar in Bangalore that sells more than 70 brews. Soongachi's Rishi Saria, 30, gave up a software-engineering job in Bangalore to return to Darjeeling and take on marketing for the family company. His cousin Gaurav Saria now heads Infinitea. "Our generation is focusing on improving our quality, product...
...collapse of the Soviet Union, India's largest export market, where demand fell by two-thirds, to less than 88 million lbs. (40 million kg) per year. India's producers had grown reliant on that guaranteed market, failing to maintain their bushes and machinery, and they never really recovered. Sri Lanka and Kenya are now the world's biggest exporters, each selling about 692 million lbs. (314 million kg) in 2006, well ahead of India's 450 million lbs. (204 million...
...guarantees not just a minimum wage for workers in tea, coffee and rubber but also housing, education, medical care and drinking water. Those benefits add about 11% to production costs and are the main reason Indian tea costs about $1.62 a kg to produce, compared with $1.23 in Sri Lanka, $1.16 in Kenya and 84¢ in Malawi. Strong unions in India's tea-growing regions have fought to preserve those benefits. Tea-estate workers are paid on average $1.38 a day in northern India and $2.25 in the south, and because the estates are so remote, workers must rely...
...SRI LANKA...