How bagless tea dip brand Woolah has sustainability at its core

Your quickest way to have a cup of tea may not just be the healthiest. The tea bag you use may not just release brew, but microscopic plastic particles as well in your cuppa. A 2019 research study from McGill University in Canada threw up this startling fact.

Researchers found that a single plastic teabag released about 11.6 billion microplastic and 3.1 billion smaller nano-plastic particles into the hot water. These particles are completely invisible to the naked eye.

Even tea bags made from paper cannot be absolved of this fact. The study pointed out that a small amount of plastic is used to seal bags shut.

What then is the solution? Brewing tea dust or leaves is not always the best idea or convenient as tea bags.

In 2021, Upamanyu Borkakoty and Anshuman Bharali introduced Woolah, a tea brand they claim to be the world’s first bagless tea dip. Patent-pending, the product is simple, efficient, and convenient–it comprises of two tea leaves and a tea-bud attached to a string that can be used to brew tea, more than once.

Producing handcrafted teas

Before the Woolah idea struck him, Borkakoty, who was born and raised in Sivasagar, a town in upper Assam, followed the corporate route after his graduation and MBA. He worked in companies like Wizcraft and Sennheiser when a holiday back home changed his path towards entrepreneurship.

“I was in a grocery shop and came across a farmer who was trying to sell the shopkeeper some packets of green tea. We got talking and he told me that it was all handcrafted organic green tea. Till then, I was using packaged green tea and when I used the one I bought from the farmer, I was hooked,” Borkakoty says.

Even then, the idea of researching into tea or using it as a pathway towards something unique did not strike on. On a business trip to China, he decided to extend his stay to tour the Fujian province to learn more about teas.

“I came back and spoke to my childhood friend Anshuman about it. We decided to start a venture called the Tea Leaf Theory in 2016 to showcase high qualities of Assam tea,” he says.

Borkakoty figured that the tea produced in Assam was of regular quality and only around 5% of the production was high quality tea.

He also discovered there were many organic tea farmers, but they were selling it to inorganic factories at a poor rate, and the quality of tea was getting affected. The question was how to create a specialty market from Assam and convert small-time organic farmers into tea producers.

“We started experimental stations where tea was handcrafted by skilled craftsmen and started selling tea to boutiques in Europe and North America. It was during this time I read about the McGill University research and though I was almost four years into the industry, I was not aware of the microplastics in tea,” he explains.

The rampant use of tea bags—around 65% in the UK and 97% in Germany and the resulting studies on the effect of microplastics on the human body made the founders think of a solution that was eco-friendly, sustainable, and one that avoided packing the tea in a bag altogether.

Two leaves and a bud–Tea without a bag

The co-founders wanted to bring the authentic taste of tea back into people’s lives.

“Usually, tea pickers pick six leaves or seven leaves and a bud, but we decided to use the top two leaves and a bud, tie it with a string, and compress it in a semi-dried form. After that, it’s sent for drying. It takes the shape of a tablet. When boiling water is poured over it in a cup, and left for five minutes, it gives you the taste of orthodox tea,” Borkakoty elaborates. The leaves can be brewed two more times without loss of taste or aroma.

Borkakoty says Woolah has created a model where they buy in pieces and not by kilograms. It currently works with two micro-organic factories in Dibrugarh district and Kakopathar and 20 organic growers who sell their leaves and make almost 4X more revenues.

Also, the number of workers in the tea industry in Assam has been dwindling due to migration to other states, and so the brand is focused on women for processing the tea in factories.

“Our solution was to get women from nearby villages to work with us. We noticed a lot of them were accompanying their children to school, and waiting there until it was time to bring them back home. We asked these women to work in our factory instead of being idle,” he explains.

Both the factories employ around 140 women who are involved in plucking, segregating, weighing, compressing, and drying the leaves. These are then sent to the packaging unit. The product is 100% compostable.

The women earn a minimum of Rs 350 a day, which can go up to Rs 800 on flexible shifts. Even college students take advantage of it to earn an income and fund their education, he says.

So far, Woolah has sold one million dips through its own website and on Amazon, and has launched in the UK and other countries in Europe.

Borkakoty says the Sivasagar-based company is on its way to clock a revenue of Rs 3 crore this fiscal. It raised Rs 2 crore from Mumbai-based Gangwal Group last year. Fifteen dips cost around Rs 450, and he believes the specialty tea industry will remain expensive until the production process becomes more efficient.

Woolah’s focus on sustainability extends to its community of workers as well.

“We have been supporting the education of 140 children of workers with books and stationery. This year, we distributed 150 solar lamps to households in villages with erratic power,” he says.

The founders are looking to raise a fresh round of investment to scale the business and penetrate markets in the US, Europe, and the Middle East.

(The story has been updated to correct a typo - 15 dips cost Rs Rs 450.)