TeaSugar: An online and offline store for variety of Tea and Coffee

 

TeaSugar is a Bangalore based startup founded by Arun S Hirehal and Sangamesh Mantur.

 

TeaSugar is India’s first dedicated online and offline aggregator for Beverages & Snacks. We aggregate multi-brand and variety Tea, Coffee, Sweeteners, Snacks & Breakfast products and other healthy drinks, says Sangamesh.

 

We got an opportunity to talk with Sangamesh, and see what he has to say. I am sure his interview with us will inspire you.

 

 

Give brief info about your startup?

TeaSugar is India’s first dedicated online and offline aggregator for Beverages & Snacks. We aggregate multi-brand and variety Tea, Coffee, Sweeteners, Snacks & Breakfast products and other healthy drinks.

Hydration and healthy snacking plays a major role in preventive health we want to serve our customers all the brands and varieties available in Market at a common point and not only making it available, providing value-added services in various forms so that they get educated on the healthy beverages & lead a healthy life.

 

What made you start your startup and what problem does it solve?

The personal experience of Tea and the importance of having healthy snacks resulted in the better& best health. This motivated us to introduce TeaSugar. Beverages and healthy snacking did cure my migraines and reduced stress to a great extent.

I got committed to providing customers with all the best available beverages and Snacks.

The major problem we solved is,  many physical outlets or online stores did not provide all the brands and varieties required, we saw the difficulty in getting the choice and brand from various points and places. Hence decided to fix this problem and bring in a value chain to this domain in a various way apart from availability.

 

Tell us about yourself, your previous jobs/ventures? What were you doing before this startup?

Founder: Arun S Hirehal a Technocrat and Entrepreneur from Hirehal village, Ron Taluk, Karnataka hold a Masters Degree in Digital Electronics and was associated with semiconductor industry for a decade. Last employment was with Avnet India handling Xilinx business.

Co-Founder: Mr. Sangamesh Mantur, holding bachelor’s degree in  Electrical Engineering and worked for FMCG company in Marketing & Business Development, hails from Bagalkot dist, Malali village joined hands to work towards implementing TeaSugar. He heads operations at TeaSugar.

Mrs Sindhu Naik, who worked for state bank of India for 3 years and after her MBA graduation from IIM Ranchi joined Arun and Sangamesh to scale the business and concept. She supports operations, finance and HR related activities.

With other team members, Mr.Vinay Kulkarni leads digital marketing & technology support and Mrs Sirisha internal operations, coordinator.

 

Where is your startup based out of? Why do you think that is the best place for you?

We are based from Bengaluru, this is the ultimate place for us as technology, Manpower and all other related sources available and we are been staying here now for a while.

Bengaluru is a cool, calm, peaceful,  lot of food, loving and caring people around ..an energetic place……

 

As a startup founder, what are you paranoid about? What keeps you awake at night?

As a founder me Arun S Hirehal want India to be healthy and Fit, Preventive Health Care measures must come on priority ▪

As we see the rise in health issues like obesity, diabetes, stress ….cardiovascular diseases..malnutrition…etc

We must fix this and see that we take care of our health in the most natural form as much as possible…

I like to quote

Let food be the first medicine with the right food at the right time can cure many diseases and improve the lifestyle.

Every night I think what best beverage or snack I can provide to my customers to keep them healthy and happy.

Also, I think how can I enrich the nutritional value in beverages and snacks, in this process we launched T-BREK Protein Tea, India’ s first Protein enriched tea Premix,  Which gives every drink around 6g of protein which can be consumed hot and cold. In cold form supports more than 20 plus recipes and takes just 2 to 3 minutes to prepare.

Going forward we are introducing vitamin tea/coffee and also to blend Probiotics into same.

 

 

Who are your competitions and how are you better than them?

We do not have direct competition,  but we see that we need to pull in strategies towards Amazon primarily.

We are India’s first dedicated, focused on Beverages and Snacks only….the exposure of products and selection is high with us and the marketing strategies are promising and we are getting the results.

We have aligned with a company called Infine Idea Technologies Rajajinagar, Bengaluru for Marketing. We have introduced Network Marketing as a strategy as customers can drink and earn cash back.

 

How hard is it to have a work-life balance as a startup founder and how do you manage it?

Nothing is hard when we are passionate and have a goal…. we enjoy every moment.

We have the best work and best beverages to enjoy. ….healthy goal

 

Have you raised funding? If yes, then we would like to know the details. If no then please tell us if you are looking to raise.

It’s was bootstrapped initially and we are looking for new investments now. Few discussions are ongoing.

 

What’s the biggest misconception people have about you? Why do they have that? What’s the reality?

Earlier it took time for them how TeaSugar would emerge and create value with selling tea brands online,

Now many of them have clarity on the value we are providing for them in supply, offers and knowledge base.

 

What gets you excited about this company?

Healthy Thinking, Healthy Snacking, Healthy Growth ….filled with happiness every day…..

 

 

Tell us how a day in your life looks like? Your schedule for a day right from the time you get up till you hit the bed at night.

There is no fixed timing for me, the day starts at 6 am, I start every day with my detox drinks and make an effort to create new recipes with my products and then hook on clear all online orders and get into marketing and business development activity.

The day ends at 6 pm or 10 pm or beyond that sometimes.

 

Tell us about your team and how did you meet each other?

We met each other through reference and we had a common goal of doing something towards preventive health.

 

 

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