849 Sanchita Shahi:

Tea is something that gives me emotional strength. And when we are talking about herbs, it just brings a lot of wellness aspect into your lives by combining the two together, it had impacted me a lot personally. So I reached out to some Ayurvedic doctors in India. That is when the idea of coming out with Tea N Me had come to me. So instead of now creating blends in my kitchen, I thought I might as well go all out with it and have Ayurvedic doctors come up with my tea plans. we have (10 of them, crafted by Ayurvedic doctors and gone through a tasting team.

Melinda Wittstock:

Sanchita, welcome to Wings.

Sanchita Shahi:

Hi. Thank you. Thank you so much. How are you?

Melinda Wittstock:

Good. I want to start with your inspiration story. What led you to found Tea N Me?

Sanchita Shahi:

Melinda, during the pandemic, it impacted a lot of people. And unfortunately, the pandemic impacted my job as well. And I took it hard, because I was also going through menopause at that point in time. And so the loss of job and going through my menopause, everything coming together, plus the pandemic, just the fear of that disease, that sickness all around you, everything compounded together, had a huge impact on me. And that’s where my journey began, actually, because I started using tea a lot at that time. Tea now is something that gives me emotional energy.

So when I was going through all this, I just turned towards tea, and started drinking really lots and lots of tea. It did help me emotionally. For sure it helped me, but physically, it wasn’t doing much for me. So what I started doing was I started adding some herbs to my tea, herbs that I am familiar with because of the kind of upbringing I have had. I’m familiar with Ayurvedic herbs. So I started adding maybe some Triphala for my digestive health, ashwagandha sometimes for my overall immunity to give me a boost, things like that. And that is when the penny dropped. I was like, “Oh my gosh, this is helping me so much. If it is helping me, it can help a lot of other women, other people out there.” And that’s how I got started. That’s how the seed of Tea N Me was sown in my head.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. So it’s Ayurvedic, and not only is it, you mentioned the emotional soothing bit, but it’s also physically helpful. So tell me a little bit more about the different herbs that are in your tea, and what they do, and how they help women specifically.

Sanchita Shahi:

Sure. So before that, let me just give you a quick overall view about our tea blends. Our tea blends, these are all wellness-centric blends. So unlike other tea brands, we are dedicated towards wellness, and wanted to offer blends that were crafted to support your health, and not just a flavor. And so each blend has been formulated, keeping a wellness aspect in mind. Now supposing, let’s take My Sound Sleep, for example. My Sound Sleep is something that helps you feel relaxed in the evening, helps you sleep better. Instead of popping maybe some kind of sleeping pill or other sleeping aids, try this. This has everything like lavender, lemon peel, orange peel, chamomile, ashwagandha, green tea. It has things that soothe and calm you. And these are all herbs put together, they are very potent. They have an impact on you, and they work their magic, is all I can say. So that was one of my tea blends. Similar to My Sound Sleep, we have nine other blends, so basically we have 10 in total.

Melinda Wittstock:

We’re going to talk about your entrepreneurial journey in a minute, but it brings with it lots of stress, because there’s so much uncertainty. There’s so much that we don’t know. There’s things beyond our control. Every day is different and whatnot. So how has tea and your tea specifically helped you on your own entrepreneurial journey as you’ve built the company?

Sanchita Shahi:

Yes, of course. I mean, like I was telling you, tea is something that gives me emotional strength. And when we are talking about herbs, it just brings a lot of wellness aspect into your lives. So just by combining the two together, it had impacted me a lot personally. So because of that, I reached out to some Ayurvedic doctors in India. That is when the idea of coming out with Tea N Me had come to me. So instead of now creating blends in my kitchen, I thought I might as well go all out with it and have Ayurvedic doctors come up with my tea plans. So these plans that you see on my website, we have 10 of them. These have all been crafted by Ayurvedic doctors and gone through a tasting team. So between the two teams, there’s been a back and forth, the doctors.

Let’s again take My Sound Sleep, for example. I go to them, “Hey, I need something that would aid sleep better. Aid, we sleep better.” And now, so they know what they have to come up with. They come up with a recipe. And also, my instructions are to make sure that these beverages taste good, which is very, very important. So once that is created, it goes to the tasting team, they taste it. And between the two teams, there’s some back and forth, and then there’s a thumbs up. So these are certain things that I went through in my journey. I don’t know if these are hardships. Honestly, it was just pure joy, honestly, doing all this. Hardships, they would be different kind of hardships. There’s some people who are not very happy talking to a woman about supply chain and things like that. So those things were challenging to a great extent, actually.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, the supply chain issue is an interesting one. I’ve had a lot of women on my podcast who have created consumer products, whether it’s in the food and beverage industry, or cosmetics or whatnot. And almost every woman talks about the problem-

Sanchita Shahi:

Definitely.

Melinda Wittstock:

… with the supply chain. Let’s break that down a little bit. I mean, what was your specific experience there, and what were some of the toughest things in getting that right?

Sanchita Shahi:

So when you see my tea plants, you will realize that they are amalgamation of a lot of herbs. And we wanted to make sure one of our things was quality. We wanted to make sure that we had absolute quality control over our blends. So we have sourced these from different parts of India, different parts of the world, to make sure that we are bringing the absolute best blend that we can to our customers. So I mean, going through a lot of vendors during that time, that was supply during when I was figuring out manufacturing, that was challenging. Like I was telling you, there were some vendors, I mean, there’s still people out there who are not very happy talking to a woman about so many things. And they will try and ask if maybe there’s a husband around there that they could talk to or something like that.

So yeah, I mean, there were some challenges, but ultimately, if you persist, things fall in place. You have to go out, gain respect, and that’s only with your persistence and accepting your style of working. So there was some challenges with supply chain, which was overcome. And constantly, there has been some shipping challenges as well. I’m not sure if it has come to your attention, Melinda, but because I bring my blends from India, so this is international shipping, there is a backlog in shipping these days.

Melinda Wittstock:

The Coronavirus just messed up supply chains worldwide. And so you were launching just as the pandemic was sort of ending, but not completely ending. So-

Sanchita Shahi:

Not completely.

Melinda Wittstock:

So how did you navigate that? Just trying to find the material, the ingredients?

Sanchita Shahi:

Yeah, actually, that was tough. That was a tough one. Especially when we had started at that time, that was hard. I mean, it did slide out my opening the website and everything for a few weeks. There were meetings with so many other, so many different kind of shipping agencies with their executives, just to figure out which one can get our products into the United States as quickly as possible. And it was just going through a lot of meetings with a lot of different kind of shipping companies, trying to figure out. And we are a small company, so it’s not like we have a ship full of load coming through. So maybe we have a small part of a container. It’s not like we have some massive order coming through.

So that was also challenging, because how do you find a shipping company that is okay to accommodate a small company like me? With my network, I was able to figure out some of the shipping companies that would accommodate us, and that’s how we finally came in. And obviously, I’m leveraging on that network and keeping in touch with them, and they’ve worked out good for me so far.

Melinda Wittstock:

As you’ve gone through building your business from the formulations to the marketing and selling it and whatnot, what other sort of things have been, I guess, a challenge that you’ve overcome? Getting it out into the world, getting people to know a bout it.

Sanchita Shahi:

I would say, I mean, for a startup entrepreneur, till you hit the big times, your challenges are a work in progress. You are challenged on a day-to-day basis on how to make your company, your products more visible out there. How do you reach out to more customers? What is that one thing that you can do out of the box which would help your brand? Because you know that your brand is awesome, that your tea blends are just amazing, but how do you bring it to the world? How do you convince the world to, “Hey, give this a chance. Try this”? So it’s a work in progress constantly. Every day, you are devising new marketing strategies. Every day, you are thinking up of new opportunities that you could avail to highlight your brand. So definitely marketing, I would say, for a startup is something that we need to keep constantly working upon, simply because that’s the only way that you can be visible to your customers.

Melinda Wittstock:

A hundred percent. So how do you market it?

Sanchita Shahi:

We blog. We blog quite a bit. We do SEO. We try to talk to podcasters like yourself, who are so instrumental in bringing our voice out to the world, hoping that your listeners would give an opportunity to a startup like ours. So these are a few things that you do. You do some digital marketing, you do some paid marketing. So these are a few things that we are doing right now.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so how do you buy it? Is it direct to consumer or is it in stores?

Sanchita Shahi:

It’s a direct to customer at this point. You can buy our tea blends from our website, www.teanme.co.

Melinda Wittstock:

Are you on Amazon and all that as well?

Sanchita Shahi:

Not at this point. At this point, we are selling only through our website.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah, I’m curious about that. Was there a decision? Because it’s a big fork in the road for a lot of companies. A lot of companies start out Amazon only, and then there’s problems with that or on their own, but people expect it to be on Amazon. So how do you navigate that? What’s the basis of your decision-making in terms of your distribution?

Sanchita Shahi:

I would want to be on Amazon eventually, but at this point we have to control pricing also to a great extent. If you were on Amazon, that’s another platform now where you have to be doing marketing. It’s hard to get visibility if you’re not doing marketing on Amazon for a new brand like ours. Again, that does boil down to spending dollars. And that is why we took a conscious decision of selling only through our website at the moment, and leveraging marketing on certain platforms so that we are able to effectively budget for ourselves. But like I said, eventually we will be on Amazon.

Melinda Wittstock:

So with marketing, I mean, there’s a lot of spend ahead of results. So how did you fund your own company? Is it bootstrapped? Did you take investments? I mean, how are you growing in that context?

Sanchita Shahi:

Yes, so it’s completely bootstrapped at the moment. This was all my hard-earned savings that has gone into this company so far. And hoping for the best. Hoping for the best, Melinda.

Melinda Wittstock:

Is it something that you at some point are going to have to raise money to be able to get to scale?

Sanchita Shahi:

I will have to, yes. And I do want to as well. At some point, we will have to look into how do we raise money? How do we take Tea N Me to the next level? I mean, there’s so many things that you can still be doing with this company. There’s so many product lines that you can add. There’s so many tea accessories that you can add. You can a ready-to-drink line to Tea N Me. And all these things, doing everything, everything. I mean, you know, you are an entrepreneur yourself. Anything that you think of requires money. And so definitely, I would love to raise money. And of course, marketing. Marketing takes up such a huge chunk of your money. So if there is investment in the company, that really, really helps you. It helps you put your word out about your company more effectively.

Sanchita Shahi:

Plus, along the way, when you are meeting with investors, you get to learn so much from them. I mean, I feel you become a smarter entrepreneur when you go through something like that.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s also very hard for women founders to raise money. We talk about that a lot on this podcast. 2% of the venture capital goes to women.

Sanchita Shahi:

Wow.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so is this something that you’re starting to think about? “How am I going to be positioned and have the relationships when it comes time to take in angel money or venture money?” What’s your [inaudible 00:17:56] on that, and at what point do you think you’re going to need that in your business?

Sanchita Shahi:

At this point, I’ve given myself a timeframe. I have said I need to be making a certain dollar amount by end of next year, by end of 2024. And at that point in time, we need to look deeply inside into the company, into our finances and everything, and where we are at this point. How can we scale and then reach out to investors? So this is my plan, to make some kind of money for the company. Because I mean, initially, this is a product company. Initially, it is very hard. And like I said, it’s bootstrapped. So it’s not like I have all the money in the world, and I’m not working any longer. It’s been hard to find a job ever since the pandemic. So given all that, I am on a tight budget. But at the same time, I know that my product is very good. I’ve had some amazing, amazing feedback from customers about my product. So given all that, I just mentally decided that by end of 2024 is when I would probably start reaching out to investors.

Melinda Wittstock:

There’s certain metrics. I mean, if you’re already growing, and you are on top of your data and your growth rates, investors tend to want to invest in success. So I’ve learned that often, the more they can extrapolate out, like “Okay, so this is what you’re doing with basically no money or a little bit of money, your own, a little bit of money, or reinvesting based on your sales and such, and this is what’s happening if we put money in, there’d be an exponential factor.” The minute you do that, it wildly increases your chance of raising money.

Sanchita Shahi:

Absolutely. And that’s why you want to show an upward graph, no matter how big or small, as long as it’s an upward graph, I think you would also feel comfortable inviting people to be investing in your company.

Melinda Wittstock:

It’s very true. So have you had help from friends and family, or is it all down to you? Your own hard-earned savings, as you’ve said?

Sanchita Shahi:

It’s all down to me. For now, it’s all down to me. So far, I have not raised any money either from friends or family, or in any other form. It’s just me right now.

Melinda Wittstock:

That’s hard to do. So you pull out all your savings. So you had a corporate job, and you mentioned that you lost that job.

Sanchita Shahi:

Yeah.

Melinda Wittstock:

What was it like transitioning from corporate culture to entrepreneurial culture? Was that a surprise to you in any way? And if so, in what ways?

Sanchita Shahi:

I mean, of course, it’s a huge change, honestly. When you’re working for yourself, you are setting the tone for your company, for the kind of work that you’ll be doing. How many hours are you going to be putting in, because you’re not accountable to anyone any longer. But the fact that this is your own hard-earned money that’s going in and to this company, that keeps you on your toes and that keeps you accountable. And the fact that you want to bring a good product to your customers, that keeps you accountable. And the fact that you want to succeed and be an established business, that keeps you accountable. So accountability can come from various sources. It just depends on how passionate you are about your business. And for me, the biggest passion was tea. And like I already said, it was tea.

And in US, the tea industry is actually thriving, Melinda. We are witnessing growth for the tea industry in US, especially post-pandemic. People realized that there’s a beverage out there which will probably not give you that bad jitters, as opposed to maybe a cup of coffee. It has the caffeine, and it is more balanced. You can have several cups of tea throughout the day without feeling those jitters, and it has antioxidants in them, which is actually good for your health and immunity. And health and immunity became the big things during the pandemic.

So the growth of the tea industry in US is something that has been very, very inspiring for me. My mission, Tea N Me’s mission, our mission is to connect people, build communities, promote health and wellbeing, and it is truly a privilege to impact this world through tea positively. And then hearing our customer stories, I told you some of the customers have been so good, so good to us. We’ve had some amazing feedback from them. The benefit of the adaptogens and Ayurvedic herbs that’s there in our tea blends. So all these things keep you focused and molded towards your goals that you are doing so many things, you have all these thoughts in your mind, and you are marching towards your goal. And so together, all these inspirations, this is what fuels my passion for Tea N Me. And this is how I have kept myself accountable as an entrepreneur, as opposed to when I was reporting to somebody in a corporate environment.

Melinda Wittstock:

And so moving forward, as you do all the things, like growing the team and leading them, and navigating all the different things you have to, what do you perceive as the biggest next steps in your business to get to those next milestones that you want to achieve?

Sanchita Shahi:

Well, next milestones, Melinda, definitely would be to be present in some of the stores. Stores like PCC, Metropolitan Market, there’s some, maybe Trader Joe’s, Whole Foods. So there’s so many stores out there that would be just perfect for our brand. So that would be next steps. Next steps would also be adding more product line to Tea N Me, like I was telling you earlier, maybe have a ready-to-drink line, add more blends to our existing line, add some tea accessories. So these would be next steps for Tea N Me.

Melinda Wittstock:

Right. Wonderful. So you have also come at entrepreneurship not only as a woman, but as a first gen-immigrant.

Sanchita Shahi:

Oh, yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

As a first-generation immigrant woman of color, and so how has that impacted you? I am going to assume that it makes it harder, but in what ways?

Sanchita Shahi:

Yes. I don’t know. I mean, this is my life, so I don’t know if it was harder compared to what. But yes, as a first-generation woman and a woman of color coming to another country, settling down and raising my family here all by myself, I mean, it’s not easy. You do face challenges along the way, especially when you don’t have any family here. When I came here, it was just me and my husband, and that’s it. I left behind a beautiful, thriving family. My grandparents, parents, uncle, aunts, my siblings, nieces, nephews. We are a closer family. And I left all that behind to come to this country, to this beautiful country, to this land of opportunities, and to make a career for myself. And it was a lot of hard work, a lot of sleepless nights, because you are on your own. You are holding down a job, you are raising your child, you are trying to run your home. And everything together was pretty challenging when I first started out.

Melinda Wittstock:

Yeah. It’s a tricky thing, because I think that we do have challenges as women, women of color, as immigrants, all these things, but I know myself personally, I don’t want to lean on that as some sort of crutch. It’s like, I am not a victim here, but you do-

Sanchita Shahi:

Oh, no.

Melinda Wittstock:

There are structural things. And how can you be aware of it, and figure out how to turn it to your advantage without it being, I don’t know, something that’s going to stop you?

Sanchita Shahi:

I mean, absolutely. I mean, as a woman, you are defying, just being out there in the corporate world. We know it is harder for a woman to go up the ladder as opposed to a man. It’s a given. That’s just how it is. So as a woman, you are always defying stereotypes. Things are changing, things are definitely turning around, but it is still a male-dominated industry. And the way you can change it or the way I have adapted to things is I have firmly believed in remaining true to myself and using my own voice, my authentic voice, to rise above whatever preconceived notions or expectations people around you of how to work in a typically traditionally male-dominated, male approach business. So I’ve just used my voice, I’ve used my style of working to rise above all that. And so yes, it’s not a bed of roses, but also, I wouldn’t say that life is full of thorns, either. I mean, you get a bit of both, and that’s what makes life. And you take things in your stride, and you move forward.

Melinda Wittstock:

And you’ve also made diversity, equity, and inclusion a key part of your brand.

Sanchita Shahi:

Yes, I have.

Melinda Wittstock:

Tell me how that actually operates in practice. And you mentioned you’re a purpose-driven brand as well. So to what extent is Tea N Me not only helping us be more healthy and such, those properties, but how is it also purpose-driven in the sense that it can have an impact on our society as a whole?

Sanchita Shahi:

Sure. I mean, I mentioned, right now, we are still in very early stages, but eventually the plan is to support other women entrepreneurs, give them a platform, reach out to women who are starting out. The stage I am at this point, there are always going to be other women at this stage. And hopefully, one day I will be at a better stage, where I can lend out a helping hand to other women, and give them a platform, maybe give them an idea about how to navigate this corporate world. We were earlier talking about investing. How do you go about doing that? How do you go about setting up your business? So that is one plan that I have.

And hiring. When we are hiring into Tea N Me, we are not hiring at this point, Melinda, but eventually, when we’ll be hiring at Tea N Me, I will try and see that we hire mostly women. So these are few thoughts I have in my mind, how to keep ourselves more diverse and inclusive, and build an environment of inclusivity in my company.

Melinda Wittstock:

You have a vision for where you’re going, which you absolutely need as an entrepreneur, this sort of North Star. Where do you think, Sanchita, you’ll be in 5 or even 10 years’ time? What’s the big vision when you paint it in your mind’s eye?

Sanchita Shahi:

The big vision is to have Tea N Me lounges all over the world, Melinda. That is the big vision. You can see us at airports, all over the town, in malls, in grocery stores, in hotels, just standalone Tea N Me lounges. That is the plan in next 10 years. In the next five years, hopefully we would have expanded all across Europe, UE. I mean, we are already shipping to US and Canada. So expanding all across Europe, UE, Australia, India, all these places, have offices in all these places. And in the next 10 years, make sure we have standalone Tea N Me lounges all over the world. That’s the big plan.

Melinda Wittstock:

How wonderful. So what’s the best way for people to find and buy the teas? I think you mentioned it already, and we’ll have it in the show notes, but it’s TeaNMe.com?

Sanchita Shahi:

Dot co. We are dot co.

Melinda Wittstock:

Dot co. Teanme.co. I’m glad I asked.

Sanchita Shahi:

Yes.

Melinda Wittstock:

And how can people find you on social media? Do you go on Instagram and all the places?

Sanchita Shahi:

Yes, we are on Instagram, we are on Facebook. We are on TikTok, Pinterest. LinkedIn, we are on all these different platforms. On our website, you can find links to all these different social media platforms, and that’s how you can get to us. And of course, www.teanme.co is where you can shop, your customers. I’m very happy to offer to your listeners a 15% discount on any order that they have. They’ll get a flat 15% discount just to add “Tea art” at checkout. And you will get that. And also to first 50 listeners, we will be giving away tea infuser to first 50 listeners who place their orders. So that’s what we have for your listeners. Hopefully, we’ll get to see some traction.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for putting on your wings and flying with us.

Sanchita Shahi:

Thank you for giving me the opportunity, and for letting me reach out to your listeners. And take care. Hopefully, we’ll meet soon sometime. I would like to meet you soon sometime.

Melinda Wittstock:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much. I really appreciate it, and I’m going to check out your teas.

Sanchita Shahi:

All right, great. Thank you, Melinda. Take care.