India’s tea industry is undergoing a structural transition shaped as much by changing consumer aspirations as by deep supply-side pressures. Rising disposable incomes, growing interest in health and wellness, and demand for premium, experience-led teas are redefining consumption. At the same time, processors are grappling with climate-linked pest challenges, quality leaf shortages, food safety complexities, and deflationary global price trends that strain producer viability.
In this conversation, Paras Desai, Executive Director, Gujarat Tea Processors and Packers Ltd. (Wagh Bakri Tea Group), shares ground-level insights on safeguarding consistency through blending, scaling wellness teas, navigating global compliance barriers, and the strategic shifts needed to secure quality supply chains for the future.
IBT: India’s tea market is evolving beyond traditional chai. Which shifts in consumer preferences do you see as structural rather than short-term?
Paras Desai: The Indian population have increased aspiration with access to higher disposable incomes. Health & Wellness and premium tea segment is growing significantly. Discerning consumers demand experience along with taste. Food safety is an aspect becoming more important to consumers.
IBT: With rising input costs and climate variability affecting tea quality, what are the biggest operational risks facing processors today?
Paras Desai: Pest control remains a huge challenge, with climate change. This leads to higher faultlines appearing among teas within food safe agro-chemical limits. Production planning becomes difficult, resulting in quality being negatively impacted. Viability of producers depends on volume today, due to a deflation in Tea prices in US$ terms over the last 15 years, resulting in lower quality teas far exceeding good quality ones.
IBT: How is the role of blending, sourcing, and quality control changing as consumers demand consistency alongside experimentation?
Paras Desai: Availability of quality teas are diminishing YoY. This results in bandwidth reduction in our ability to provide our consumers what they are used to. Wagh Bakri has a promise to its loyal consumers to deliver the best in class. We done leave any stone unturned, to keep this promise.
IBT: Premiumisation and wellness-led teas are gaining ground. What determines whether these segments scale or remain niche?
Paras Desai: To ensure consumers continue to endorse this segment, delivery in organoleptic characteristics plays a very important role. Having said that, it is also very important to merge this with innovative technology, where delivery of the product, consistently to suit their taste profile, is done with minimal human intervention.
IBT: What are the biggest roadblocks Indian tea brands face when competing in global markets—price, branding, compliance, or distribution?
Paras Desai: Production and processing of tea at the garden level is still a highly labor intensive activity. This area requires intervention to ensure consistency of product, food safety of produce and economic viability of producers, to secure supply chain security for packers.
IBT: Looking ahead, what strategic shifts will be critical for India’s tea processing sector to stay competitive over the next decade?
Paras Desai: Concerted focus on ensuring increased supply in quality, which is food safe, combined with a more pragmatic approach from importing countries on residue levels, to ensure a balanced supply demand situation where all segments in the value chain work together in partnership to ensure that the consumer has access to the best teas, at sustainable price points, with a satisfaction that all segments of the supply chain have access to at least minimum living wage.
