Imphal (Dec 5): It’s difficult to imagine that someone could market a kind of grass as a hot beverage drink and take on the mighty traditional tea industry. But a young man from Manipur has done just that and scripted his own story of “audacity of hope”.
Ragesh Keisham is making a dent in the Manipur tea market, small it may be, but a dent never the less and is audaciously aiming to go global. At The SuiGeneris, Ragesh and his team of 500 coworkers are busy packing a particular species of the lemon grass — Cymbopogon Citratus — and smartly marketing it as alternative green tea sans caffeine. For those wishing to kick the habit of caffeinated tea, his CC Tea is the answer, claims Ragesh.
The young entrepreneur also claims that his green tea helps people complaining of poor digestion, stomach aches, bowel spasm and diarrhoea. Its is a mild sedative and clams nerves. Women would like to know that it also helps relieve menstrual cramps and nausea. Besides, the tea made of this grass is also effective in reducing fever or lowering blood pressure, he adds.
Ragesh, who planted the first batch of 1,000 saplings of the grass brought from Indonesia at his farm in the hope of extracting oil, discovered the potential of the grass after he came across an article from Brazil where the grass was used for treating fever.
Today, Ragesh claims, he has nearly 2% of Manipur’s Rs 2 crore per month tea market. “We started with just 200 packets per month production capacity, but today we produce 30,000 packets and are scaling up as the demand for the tea has increased,” he says.
Ragesh depended solely on the word-of-mouth marketing to promote the drink and it clientele mainly includes people who are health consciousness and want to kick the caffeine habit. “But today many people have become loyal drinkers. Our website stands a testimony to that,” he adds.
Ragesh also believes he is ready to export and have received good response from the US, UAE and European countries.
“The demands from abroad is so huge that I am not even able to begin catering to it as my production capacity is still not large enough. However, we are scaling up and machineries are arriving in few months. In the next five months, we should be able to increase our production to 1,00,000 packets per month.”
Happy with a big response from the south Indian city of Bangalore, Ragesh says: “So far we were selling our product in Manipur only, but with the demand rising, we have opened a office in New Delhi to deal with the exports and will be opening a warehouse in Guwahati, he said of his future plan.
Asked if he is confident about the supply of raw material, he says he has 25 acres under plantation and had acquired another 75 acres where plantation was being taken up. “It takes four months for the grass to mature and after that it can be harvested every three months. So, I am confident of a steady supply of the raw materials.”
An MBA who chucked a Rs 3 lakh a month salary with a UK-based company, Ragesh says it was not just about money, but the need to prove that being enterprising pays. And that drove him to try the untested waters.
He wouldn’t say if he succeeded in breaking into the tough tea market but having given jobs to 500 people is a huge satisfaction.
“The global tea market is 46 million tonnes per year. Even if I get 1% of that, it is Rs 2,556 crore,” he says grinning from ear to ear. That sure is high hopes but not going to stop him from taking up further challenges. Ragesh has come up with another concept of marketing Manipur along with the tea bags.
“Every tea bag has a photograph of something unique to Manipur and with every dip the world will learn a little bit about Manipur.” This is a way of thanking Manipur, he signs off.
Source: http://sevensisterspost.com
