In the early 2010s, most Indians still brewed tea at home and bought loose-leaf teas (not packaged in tea bags) from mass-produced brands like Tata Tea, Brooke Bond, Society Tea and Wagh Bakri. Interestingly, people had discovered cafe-brewed coffee by then, with speciality chains like Café Coffee Day and Barista springing up nationwide and popularising the café culture. However, tea lounges/salons were a rare phenomenon, limited to a handful of urban pockets.
Nitin Saluja and Raghav Verma wanted to change that for tea partisans. The…
