We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Raj Vable. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Raj below.
Raj, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Risk taking is something we’re really interested in and we’d love to hear the story of a risk you’ve taken.
“I’m sorry Raj, we don’t have any tea.”
I was white washed with panic as Kaliash delivered the news. It was April 2015, and two years earlier, I had started Young Mountain Tea with a promise to Kailash’s co-op that if they grew tea, I’d start a company to sell it. I was on a trip to get the first harvest, which I had presold through a Kickstarter campaign. Unfortunately, as Kailash had just informed me, the harvest didn’t exist because the tea plants didn’t take well to the soils.
They could have let me know over the phone, but didn’t want to disappoint me, so it wasn’t until I was there that the news came.
I was desperate, aware that I had already spent a chunk of the money that customers had paid for to buy tea that didn’t exist. It took about two days for the waves of panic to subside, and then I got to work. With another member of the co-op, we began reaching out to other farmers to see if there was any chance we could get the tea made by another community.
We had previously heard the Indian government had a program to employ farmers to grow tea in another part of the state, so we began making phone calls and paying people visits. Eventually, we got through to Desmond, a third generation tea farmer with a MS in biochemistry, who was working to organize his region to grow tea in a way that created sustainable livelihoods for mountain farmers.
I took a four hour car ride through the foothills to get to him and landed at his doorstep, a little motion sick from the winding roads and a whole lot of hopeful that something could come out of this visit.
Sitting under pine trees outside Desmond’s office, I shared my predicament and asked if Desmond could help. Since all tea comes from the same plant – including black, green, matcha, white, and more – I had made the (somewhat unorthodox) call of promising customers a white tea, because most people were familiar with Indian black tea and we wanted to do something new.
Desmond had only ever made black tea, but he was intrigued by the challenge. He said that if I promised to buy whatever he made, he’d give it a try. Committing to a yet-to-be-made tea (again) would require me locking in the last of the money I had to spend. But if it didn’t work, I’d be returning to Oregon empty handed with some calls to make to customers. I wasn’t comfortable with it, but Desmond seemed a straight shooter and certainly knew a lot about tea, so I agreed. We shook hands, and Desmond said to give him two months to get it done.
Flash forward to June, and I was back in Delhi at my cousin Akhil’s apartment, where we received the sample from Desmond. I’ll never forget the moment we carefully shook the first ever lot of Kumaon White tea out of its foil package and into the kettle. It looked, tasted, and smelled right. Desmond had done it.
We had taken a risk on each other, and it had worked. That formed the basis of our partnership, which has grown steadily in the ~decade since. Today, we’re setting up a processing facility with shared ownership between Desmond, farmers in his village, and Young Mountain Tea. This venture, with additional funding from USAID, Frontier Co-op, and Acumen, aims to empower women tea farmers by sharing profits with local communities. Our goal is to provide stable income to over 500 farmers in area, and produce a range of teas. As I write this in February, we’re on track for the first production run to be in May. We’ll have the first teas available in the US beginning July, available through our website.
And the first tea that we’ll make in this facility is the same one that Desmond made 9 years ago – Kumaon White. We’re looking forward to raising our first cups, in honor of the risk we both took on each other.
Raj, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
It all began in 2013, when our founder, Raj, was working in the remote, picturesque Himalayan region of Kumaon. Traveling by buses crammed with people and goats, he passed through empty village after empty village, each surrounded by fallow farmland and washed out roads. He learned that the deserted towns were effects of urban migration, a problem shared by villages across the Himalayas. The region’s youth were fleeing to the cities in search of career opportunities, and the once-rich farmland was slowly becoming unstable, triggering landslides during the monsoons.
The remaining villagers were skilled growers, living vibrant lives through subsistence farming. Local farmers were interested in reviving abandoned tea gardens, while the American specialty tea market was simultaneously taking off. With the potential for high-end Indian tea largely untapped, there seemed to be a widening hole in the market that could be filled by smaller growers. And that’s when the idea that would later become Young Mountain Tea was sparked.
Having worked with Kumaon farmers for four years, Raj knew that those who remained in the villages were the torch-bearers of small-scale, sustainable farming practices that had been honed over hundreds of years. He and a local friend who believed in the potential for Kumaon tea, began a tour of the region to explore how they could help support the revival of tea farming there.
They learned that Kumaon had a rich history in tea, and that at one point in the early 1900s, the British had planted the hillsides with tea bushes and installed factories to process the tea leaves. However, Kumaon was far from the trading ports, making it challenging to setup supply lines. As a result, the regions of Darjeeling and Assam, much closer to the British port capital of Kolkata (then called Calcutta), had become the Indian teas of choice. In 2013, Kumaon’s tea gardens were now abandoned, having slowly deteriorated into echoes of their former glory. Yet some hillsides were still dotted with 150-year-old tea bushes. It was incredible to see that the resilient plants could survive, even with decades of neglect. But the lack of demand meant the remaining plants were left to grow, untamed.
By studying the Indian tea industry, Raj learned the primary model of tea production today largely mirrors the ones first used by the British in the 1840s. This model, called the “estate” model, places high priority on quantity and efficiency. The estate model also excludes tea farmers from any ownership of the tea gardens. The workers on tea estates depend on the owners for housing, food, healthcare, and other basics for survival. As a result, tea farmers across the country were leaving the industry for better paying jobs in the cities. The issue in Kumaon was not unique, and a solution was needed for the industry as a whole.
It became clear the Indian tea industry was ripe for reinvention. There was space for a new small-scale farmer model where farmers were the owners, and where quality was more important than quantity. To understand how to make world-class teas that could command a high enough price to benefit the growers, we partnered with renowned industry experts—from Rajah Banerjee at Darjeeling’s legendary Makaibari Estate (the world’s first certified organic tea garden), to the Tinjure Cooperative in Nepal (one of the first community-owned tea production facilities on the Indian subcontinent). These progressive leaders have served as mentors for our work in Kumaon and other rural mountain villages, and we’re proud to offer their teas in our collection.
The most exciting moments in our work continue to be those around a cupping table. There’s nothing more thrilling than bringing together rural Himalayan tea makers with international tea tasters, all working towards a common goal of a better tea that empowers more people. That goal continues to motivate and drive our work, and by drinking these teas, you join the journey.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Last March, we had dual resignations from two team members in central decision making roles. One of them had a mission-critical role in running our warehouse, and we had two weeks to figure out how to work without her. I was traveling at the time, so dropped everything and focused on solving a could-be-crisis.
We decided to outsource our operations entirely, partnering with a larger customer that was set up to handle everyhing we do (importing, storage, production, order fulfilment) and on a larger scale. It was an itense four month stretch of winding down our in-house logistics, moving the beating heart of our business to California, and getting things up and running. We survived it, and as a result, our expenses have been dramatically reduced.
It was an unexpected moment of restructuring our model on the fly. I’m proud that we came out with a better model than we started. When life gives you lemons, grab the black tea and make Arnold Palmers!
Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?
It was May, and our we had two weeks worth of cash in our bank accounts. We had thought we had secured a loan, but learned our approval had gotten for additional review due to the lender’s internal system hiccup, and we had to fight to get it back.
It wasn’t easy to decide how much to tell the team – too much transparency and we could trigger chaos, but it seemed wrong to pretend everything was fine. I broke the news during our weekly call by saying “We got unexpected news, and we’ll be fine, but right now, it’s not clear how. We’re working on a solution.”
We had to lean on our relationships with suppliers to give us more time to pay their bills, and in the meantime, went all in on helping the lender get what they needed. It was beyond nerve wracking to see our bank account so low, but in the end, we survived. The experience reminded me of the importance of maintaining good relationships with our partners, so they’re willing to be flexible when we need it.
Contact Info:
- Website: youngmountaintea.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/youngmtntea/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/YoungMountainTea
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/young-mountain-tea/about/?viewAsMember=true
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_6_gnVQvoiFSJ_asG3681A
- Other: Link to marketing assets that you are welcome to use! https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/12aLXqzY-lQVbWDdVA1oOKLZrqYJ98qmi
Image Credits
All photos credit to Young Mountain Tea