By Aravinda Anantharaman | Managing Editor
India Tea News for the week ending 8 March, 2024
Bihar Tea Moves Closer to the Mainstream
Bihar, a state that borders Bengal, has been designated as a non-traditional tea area since 1998 and has just been awarded a trademark by the Indian government. The trademark provides for better protection for goods and services.
Bihar today has 56,000 hectares – mainly in the Kishanganj district – in tea cultivation and produces over 45,000 metric tons of raw tea leaves annually. In 2020, tea was identified as a focus area under the Bihar Agri Investment Policy (2020). Under the Bihar Tea Development Scheme (2023), tea producers are eligible for a 50-90% subsidy on tea cultivation. The state is keen to expand the area under tea farming. Leading the tea movement here is Doke Tea by Rajiv Lochan, who has been producing artisanal tea for the last decade.
Microsoft Co-founder Bill Gates Unwittingly Promotes Chai
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates was in India last week and introduced his trip with a video on chai! Now famous as “One Chai Please,” it shows Gates walking up to a chaiwala and commenting that innovation abounds here, even in how chai is made. This video on Gates’ Instagram handle has garnered 7.6 million likes, besides making the chaiwala, Sunil Patel, who goes by the name Dolly Chaiwala, famous overnight.
Watch the video here.
Tea Studio Gets Patent for its Nilgiri Bamboo
Muskan Khanna, of the boutique Tea Studio in the Nilgiris, won the patent for her tea, Nilgiri Bamboo, described as a green tea made using only the internode between the terminal bud and the first leaf of a tea shoot. The patent comes after five years of work. Khanna runs The Tea Studio in the Nilgiris as a women-only company producing bespoke specialty tea. In a social media post, Muskan’s father, tea veteran Indi Khanna, said that this patent is second in tea making, following the patent for the Rotorvane in the 1960s granted to the TRI.
Powered by RedCircle
