Her roots from the tea town of India to being an entrepreneur on the
Konkan coast has been quite diverse. Monalisa identifies herself as a writer.
She writes about culture, travel, food and lifestyle and she has been doing so
for the last decade. Her tryst with entrepreneurship started when she
spontaneously decided to never go back from Goa, a place she is convinced comes
the closest to what she thinks is paradise. Her writing soul she quips found
many inspirations but her practical soul needed the finances to be in place.
Hence the business that met with her first love, that of the aroma of freshly
brewed tea and the promises it held.
Her first venture was setting up a restaurant in an already
established resort in Anjuna but didn’t last more than six months. The
entrepreneurial instinct within got her to convert old Portuguese houses into
traveller homes that welcomed guests from far and wide. She stuck to this for
the ‘season’ and spent the rest of the slow months back home in Assam. The
laid-back lifestyle in the tea gardens amalgamated with the Susegad of Goa and her
home-stays were already getting rave reviews. Still shuffling between mountains
and the beach, “The quest to find some kind of stability was always present
even though it was subconscious,” she says.
The saga continued for a whole year until one thing lead to
another and the operation had to be shelved.
Time to move on!On her birthday in 2018, she decided to give her
love for tea a shot.Tea Amo, she says, was born out of the sheer need for a
good cup of tea.
“India is predominantly a tea drinking country, yet the access
to good quality tea is not as much as it should be, since most of it is
exported. For a population of 1.3 billion, majority of which is used to ‘subeh
ki chai’, it is ironical that the availability of good tea is not so high”.
Monalisa has been living away from home for the past fourteen
years and since then she has been carrying her personal stash of tea along
everywhere. Tea Amo solves this hurdle whilst she figured how she could give
back to the community she belonged to and also the ones she lived in, through
her venture.
Working at the grassroots level, identifying and solving for
problems of the massive tea industry was on the top of her agenda. She started
contacting friends, family and everyone on her contact list who remotely had
any association or knowledge of good tea. Intense research and traveling across
the north east, interacting with farmers, she realised the small scale setups
could really use her help. “Once you get a lead, the universe directs you.
That’s what happened with me”, smiles Monalisa.
This led to her collaborating with these farmers who has small
plantations, a hygienic process and lots of passion for the authentic tea
culture of the north east of India. Today her company has almost 75 farmers
working with her and delivering her the best produce that she in turn is making
available to tea lovers across Goa. They collectively and traditionally produce
some exquisite specialty tea that is not just organic but also full of
medicinal benefits that are supposed to rejuvenate ones soul.
To create awareness about the right steeping process and the tea
culture, she hosts tea tasting workshops and sessions in markets, does regular
events with restaurants and is often seen brewing her special teas across
popups and fairs in Goa.
Monalisa and Tea Amo are venturing into an unexplored territory
by opening up newer avenues of outreach, an approach to popularise the most
loved beverage by working with small time farmers and making them sustainable.
This not only enables them to get a better pay and make authentic tea available
inthe state, it also allows this ever happy girl from Assam stay close to two
things she loves the most – Goa and Tea!
(Monalisa
and Tea Amo can be followed on Instagram on @ mona_the_lisa and @teaamogoa
respectively)
