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Two friends living in India and Canada have embarked upon a commercial journey to add new flavour to the souring relationship between the two countries at a time when the diplomatic tensions between New Delhi and Ottawa are at an all-time high.
Assam Tea could soon be the bond binding the two countries with this newfound association.
‘Aromica Tea’, a tea house based out of Guwahati, Assam, in collaboration with ‘Defy Tea’ a tea company based in Canada, is set to launch a range of Assam Wellness Tea in the Canadian market.
The first consignment shall export Mint Green Tea, Lemon grass tea, Ginger Green Tea & Vanilla Chai.
Vancouver-based businessmen Vilayat Ahmed and Naser – owners of ‘Defy Tea’ have undertaken this initiative with the objective of promoting Assam tea and supporting the tea farmers in collaboration with ‘Aromica Tea of Assam’.
Vilayat Ahmed started his career as a tea planter in Assam and was a colleague of Ranjit Baruah, the founder of ‘Aromica Tea’, where both worked for 20 years in the tea industry.
With his vision of promoting Assam tea in Canada, Vilayat flew down to Guwahati and discussed his plans with Ranjit Baruah. The old friends collaborated and designed models to promote Assam through its golden crimson read in Canada.
“This is Assam Tea with an added shield. We are all set to launch our tea in Canada equipped with an electronic chip for traceability and validation. As tension mounts between India and Canada, us friends from these two countries have come together to join hands and promote Assam (Indian tea) through its rich tea in Canada,” said Ranjit Baruah, Owner, ‘Aromica Tea’.
The unique component of this special tea is that the customer shall be able to validate the genuineness of the Assam tea from any of its counterfeit products.
Services of LW3, a tech startup in Assam founded by Abhijit Pegu, who deals with traceability and blockchain with IoT have been availed to make the tea internationally temper proof thereby ensuring the true essence of the leaves produced in the state.
‘Defy Tea’, for the first time in the history of tea marketing, shall have a tea package with an electronic chip that will entail coordinates of the location of production, blending and packaging which, unlike the regular QR code technology, is tamper-proof.
LW3 uses blockchain to bring features like transparency and immutability that shall make the system decentralised and automated. In one word, ‘more credible’.
The embedded passive IoT tags with encrypted metadata and clone restriction features provide the necessary provenance and traceability features to be discovered by a smartphone.
“LW3 Phygital Product Passport (P3) Solution based on IoT, Mobile Computing and Algorand Blockchain can lock the true value of Assam Tea and offer consumers a choice to establish traceability and verify the genuineness of Assam Tea. With time, we aim to build sufficient awareness about our solution in the market, so that consumers will eventually stop buying unverifiable Assam Tea,” said Abhijit Pegu, owner of LW3.
If Assam government officials are to be believed, what people consume in the name of tea is actually a mixture of chemical substances. Authentic tea is just too expensive, they say. The cheapest authentic Assam tea comes at Rs 5,000 per kg, according to D M Kakti, Deputy Director, Tea Board of India.
Assam tea worth Rs 3,300 crore has been sold at the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre (GTAC) in the financial year 2022-23. Around 165 million kg of tea was sold at the tea auction centre in 2022-23 with an average price of Rs 191.26 per kg, according to the official data provided by the Guwahati Tea Auction Centre in fiscal year 2023.
United Arab Emirates was the leading importer of tea from India with an export value of about 13 billion Indian rupees. The second leading importer was Russia with an export value of more than seven billion Indian rupees.
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