Undulating slopes of green, bird watching, the chance of encountering a wild animal, luxurious home stays…Tea gardens have come to be associated with all these and more. And Jose Felix is a lucky man because he spent his childhood in these surroundings. He acknowledges that and loves Valparai where he grew up, but says there is also a flip side to life there.
“I studied in a plantation school in Tamil medium till class 10 after which I left to join a boarding school. When I went back after a few years, many of my classmates who were good in studies had dropped out and were plucking tea.” Poverty, missed opportunities and lack of exposure prevented these kids from doing better.
Jose wondered if he could help bring about some change in the lives of at least a few of these kids. When he got together with two of his friends, Pradeep Raghunathan and A.M. Rajaram, whom he knows since his Valparai days, he realised he actually could. The three have stayed in touch all these years while building their own careers. They share special memories of spending weekends on the hills in an estate, and access to good quality tea. A casual conversation led them to ask themselves, ‘Why not do something different from the run-of-the-mill stuff we have been doing all these years?’ With Jose’s links to the tea gardens, the obvious choice was doing business with tea.
The result was an online portal to sell tea, simply called >teadude.com . Pradeep describes this as “A for-profit business but one with a not-for-profit soul”.
Giving back The idea was simple, doable and would give them a chance to give something back to society. They would sell good quality tea, sourced directly, on their portal and 10 per cent of the income would be put away to educate deserving children of tea plantation workers at a quality institution. “Most children drop out of school between classes 8 and 12. And that is where we hope to step in and provide an opening to deserving kids,” says Jose.
Keeping it simple
“We do not want to overreach ourselves. We want to keep our plans simple and manageable. So if we can put at least six to 10 kids through high school in the next two years, it would justify our initiative,” explains Pradeep. They have found it will cost around Rs. 80,000 per child per year for four years, from Class eight to 12. The three friends are aware of the huge responsibility it is to educate even one child. They have identified an English medium boarding school and are in talks with it. The principal suggested that class eight was a good time to shift a child from Tamil medium to English as it gives him or her ample time to adjust and cope before the board exams. Jose recollects the tough time he had when he shifted.
The tea dudes rely on word-of-mouth networking. They hope the quality of their products will speak for itself. “We will depend on organic growth, by building a sensible, truthful and sustainable business model with strong focus on integrity. We have not built the normal five-year plans that start-ups do, to see funds. We aspire to stay realistic by setting small short-term goals and achieving them. The goal as of now is to send the first kid to boarding school in the academic year 2015-16.”
“The money we can save on advertising will go into the education corpus,” says Rajaram. “We keep our overheads low. We save on shipping costs as we sell a minimum of 500 gm-packs of tea. Our aim is to sell the best possible tea at the lowest price possible,” adds Jose.
They operate out of a small room at Rajaram’s factory in Coimbatore. Coimbatore, because of its proximity to tea from the Nilgiris and Valparai, coffee from Coorg and nuts and spices from Kerala, etc. In fact, their coffee has won them many admirers too.
Says Jose: “When we scale up and can afford to take the risk of hiring and associated responsibility of taking care of someone’s career, we aspire to hire children of plantation labourers. But that’s just an aspiration now.”
So far, teadude.com has around 250 happy customers. “As of now, we have zero complaints,” says Jose.
Many of their regular buyers are NRIs who buy the tea and carry it back to wherever they are.
Once they have the money required for putting a child through school for five years, they will do so.
You can be a part of the initiative by buying tea and other products on teadude.com
Three dudes
Rajaram, Pradeep and Jose are not drawing any salary from teadude.com for one year
Pradeep worked in tech start-ups such as Athena, Nuclear Software and Paisapower. Besides tea, he is a professional photographer and a freelance designer. He is also a cruciverbalist and an ardent fan of old Hindi songs.
Rajaram runs Galaxy Engineering, that manufactures precision components for engineering products. He is an avid cricket fan and a current affairs freak.
Jose handled leadership positions in Internet and Media organisations. Was VP, New Media, of Nimbus communications , senior VP in Matrimony.com group and Business Manager in Naukri.com. He is an aspiring amateur chef and a football fan.
