1. Rungta Tea has grown steadily without the kind of advertising muscle that national brands have. What has marketing really meant for you as a brand?
Marketing for us has always meant earning attention, not buying it. We don’t try to out-shout national brands. We’d lose that battle. What we’ve focused on instead is ground-level visibility, retailer relationships, local presence, and making sure the product speaks for itself. At Rungta Tea, our product quality is our hero. It’s the most powerful marketing tool we have. If the quality is genuinely better at a given price point, and you make it consistently available, consumers will find you. That’s been our philosophy from day one.
2. Building trust in a new market is never easy. What does that journey typically look and feel like for Rungta Tea?
It’s slow, and we’ve made peace with that. When you enter a new market, nobody knows you. Shopkeepers are skeptical, consumers aren’t looking for you. The only thing that changes that is consistency – showing up with the same quality, the same reliability, every single time. Trust is built slowly and lost instantly. So, we don’t rush it. We’d rather be genuinely embedded in a market than superficially present in many.
3. The tea category in India is deeply personal and habitual. How do you think about winning over a consumer who has been loyal to another brand for years?
You don’t win them over by talking. You win them over by delivering. Tea is one of the most habitual purchases a consumer makes. Switching only happens when something consistently better is within reach. Our focus is on giving consumers a noticeable difference in taste, colour, and strength. Regional loyalty is very much alive, but it’s no longer blind. Consumers stay loyal when quality and value justify that loyalty. So our job is simply to be better, be available, and be patient enough to let the product do the convincing.
4. As you expand into more markets and channels, how do you make sure the brand stays consistent and doesn’t lose what made it work in the first place?
The non-negotiables never move. Sourcing standards, blending quality, taste consistency remain exactly what they’ve always been, regardless of which market or channel we’re entering. What evolves is how we make ourselves accessible and visible. We’ve modernised our packaging, built a digital presence, improved point-of-sale visibility. But none of that touches the core promise. The moment you start adapting the product to cut costs or chase convenience, you’ve lost what made people trust you.
5. Where do you see Rungta Tea in the next few years — and what excites you most about where the brand is headed?
What excites me most is that we’re still early. There’s significant headroom in India – in markets we haven’t entered, in consumers we haven’t yet reached, and in channels that are still opening up. We’re building depth before breadth, and when that foundation is solid, growth follows naturally. The vision is to become a strong, trusted multi-state brand across North and East India first and then let that strength take us further. We’re not in a rush. Sustainable brands aren’t built in quarters.
