Kaushal Dugar: Bring the end consumer a garden in a tea cup

Raised in Darjeeling, it’s little wonder that Kaushal Dugar lives and breathes tea. With his family in the tea business (his father used to supply tea plantations with mechanical equipment and his brother runs a tea export business in Dubai), it was inevitable that Dugar too would find his way into the trade. He, however, took a circuitous route, via a stint as a strategy consultant at KPMG in Singapore. It evidently stood him in good stead because he launched Teabox, an online direct-to-consumer tea brand.

“Coming from a family that has been in the industry, I had great exposure to some very good teas. But in all the time I spent outside India, I never got the same kind of tea. I realized that by the time the tea reached the end consumer, there was complete deterioration in its quality,” says Dugar.