Good morning!
Where do you source your morning chai from?
For most Indians, our morning doesn’t begin without a steaming cup of tea. India’s favourite beverage has a strong aroma, which when accentuated by the zing from various spices is enough to wake us up from our slumber and boost our immunity.
In recent years, India’s Darjeeling tea has made a name for itself in the global market, with UK brand Twinings Tea and Starbucks subsidiary Teavana boasting of the Indian flavour to their customers.
But there was a need for a homegrown tea brand making an impact globally. Enter Vahdam Teas. Founded in 2015 by Bala Sarda at the age of 23, the New Delhi-based tea brand now sells in over 104 countries.
Vahdam Teas started with loose-leaf teas, including black tea, green tea, oolong tea, white tea, etc. Now, it has ventured into 175 SKUs, including pyramid-tea bags, superfoods, gift sets, assortments, teaware, and drinkware.
And guess what? Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Mariah Carey, Martha Stewart, and Chris Pratt, among others, swear by it as well.
The Interview
Most Indians tend to buy gold in the jewellery form and typically take a lot of pride in owning it. The act of pawning gold for cash has traditionally been looked at as something that tends to hurt one’s pride. Kochi-based Muthoot Finance, the world’s largest gold financing company, knew it was essential to address this taboo and eliminate the so-called shame and embarrassment surrounding gold loans.
George Alexander Muthoot, Managing Director, Muthoot Finance, says the company explained to its customers that they can move the gold from their locker to Muthoot’s locker, and avail gold loans safely and securely, whenever they needed some liquidity.
Editor’s Pick: 100X Entrepreneur Podcast
It’s been a long and extremely interesting journey for Nishith Rastogi, Co-Founder and CEO of Locus.sh. After graduating from BITS Pilani and launching RideSafe, a real-time route deviation detection application for women’s safety, to establishing Locus — a supply chain intelligence and logistics planning startup — every stage has been stimulating and filled with learnings. In this episode of 100X Entrepreneur Podcast, Nishith talks about his entrepreneurial journey, and why he went from launching a B2C app RideSafe, to a B2B solution. Read more.
Startup Spotlight
A 7-month-old coding startup that made it to Y Combinator’s Winter Batch ’21
Vivek Prakash knows a thing or two about building online communities. As the Co-founder and CTO of HackerEarth since 2012, the IIT Roorkee alumnus built and nurtured a four million-strong community of developers and programmers from all over the world. But from 2019 onwards, Vivek was on the lookout for his next big idea, and the K-12 education space in India caught his attention.
He quit HackerEarth in January 2020 and set up Codingal in July 2020. The Bengaluru-based startup offers a live platform for K-12 students to learn coding and STEM subjects in a fun manner. Read more.
Vivek Prakash (L) and Satyam Baranwal, Co-founders, Codingal
News & Updates
Before you go, stay inspired with…
Ronnie Screwvala
“It is life after each setback or failure that defines you and not the failure that defines you.”
— Ronnie Screwvala, Co-founder and Chairman, upGrad
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