Online tea brand, Vahdam Teas raises $1.4 million in series A round of funding led by Fireside Ventures

Vahdam Teas, a premium online tea brand, has secured a series A round of funding of $1.4million (about Rs. 9 crore). The funding for this round was led by consumer focused fund Fireside Ventures in addition to existing investors like Singapore Angel Network, Mumbai Angels and a few other high net-worth individuals.

Kanwaljit Singh, founder of Fireside Ventures, and formerly with Helion Ventures, will be joining the company’s board, as part of the deal.

In addition to strengthening it warehousing and logistics abilities, the Delhi-based company also plans to use the funds for marketing and development purposes. Vahdam Teas will be introducing new products to their existing and new categories of teas.

The company procures their tea from about 100 plantations across India and Nepal which is vacuum-packs and ships within 48-96 hours in order to keep the products fresh. As per the company, Vahdam Teas has grown 7x in revenues over the last 10 months with an average gross margin of over 50%.

Vahdam Teas was founded in 2015 by Bala Sarda as an online platform that ships Indian tea to several places across the globe. Currently they have 1,50,000 customers across 83 countries, marking about 15,000-20,000 orders per month. Depending on the season and harvest region, Vahdam stocks more than 100 types of teas. Customers could sign up for a subscription and receive a pack of five different varieties every month.

Sarda said, “Over the last two years, we have worked very hard in setting up an efficient supply chain, right from the estates of India to our consumers in the US and other parts of the world…We plan to now further penetrate our key markets with customer acquisition and marketing.”

With more than 70 signature in-house blends, Vahdam Teas also sells loose leaf teas which makes up for about 80% of their sales. Of this, the US accounts for about 80% of its revenue which it is looking to further penetrate.