Indians love chai! To say that drinking tea is one of our favourite pastimes would be quite the understatement. In other words, this isn’t exactly what you’d call ‘breaking news’. However, what might surprise you is the fact that videshis love chai as much as (if not more!) than us desis do, as evident from this truly unbelievable story.
Brook Eddy, an American woman who first came to India back in 2002, has made a ...wait for it….. whopping 227 crores by actually selling chai to videshis! After joining the Swadhyay Parivar (a devotional movement based in Maharashtra) and having roamed the villages of Western India, Eddy moved back to Colorado and started a foundation called ‘Bhakti Chai’. She initially started out by brewing her own jars of tea and selling them from the back of her car, but later saw her chai gaining immense popularity among friends and family members.
According to Eddy, “I realized the recipe I had crafted for myself, a fiery fresh ginger chai, could be produced for cafés and retailers to bring people not only ‘India in a cup’ but build a mission-driven company on the tenants of bhakti.”
What started as a simple project has now become an incredibly successful venture with more than 20 employees and, as mentioned above, revenue of 227 crores!
via GIPHY
Well, it looks like we all should start considering alternate career paths now.