HISTORY OF INDIAN TEA AND ITS IMPACT ON SOCIETY AND ECONOMICS

Nearly 200 years ago, a Scottish gentleman called Robert Bruce was wandering in the Upper Brahmaputra Valley, when he came across wild bushes that changed the world forever: Indian tea.

Before that brilliant discovery, Indian tea simply did not exist. Despite the attempts of planting chinese seedlings into the Indian soil, they could not survive the heat of the Indian summer.

A couple of years later, 12 chests of Assam tea made their way to London markets, where they were sold for the first time at London auctions, paving the way for the foundation of the first tea plantation company in India and the world: Assam Company India Limited (ACIL). Since that time, and for over 180 years, the tea industry has been the beating heart of the Indian economy, changing the lives of millions.

Today, India is the second largest tea producer worldwide, with 13,000 tea gardens, employing a workforce of more than 2 million people.