At BrilliantRead Media, we always strive to bring meaningful and inspiring stories from India and around the world to empower and motivate our growing community. As part of this endeavour, we invited Gazal Jalan for an exclusive interview with us. Gazal is an Entrepreneur and Founder & CEO at Lluvia Tea. Let’s learn more about her inspiring journey, teaching philosophy, and valuable insights.
Excerpts from our exclusive interview with Gazal:
Your journey beautifully combines marketing, entrepreneurship, and Assam’s rich tea heritage. What inspired you to establish Lluvia Tea, and what was the vision behind creating a boutique tea brand rooted in sustainability and culture?
Honestly, curiosity got me first, but purpose kept me going. I was in Singapore, working in strategy consulting at IPG Mediabrands, helping build brand stories for global companies. Yet every trip back home to Assam left me wondering why some of the world’s finest tea was reaching consumers as an anonymous product, with no story, no traceability, and little connection to its origin.
What troubled me even more was the gap between the tea garden and the consumer. Tea is an agricultural product, yet by the time it reaches many homes, it has often travelled through auctions, warehouses, distributors, and multiple intermediaries. Along the way, freshness, traceability, and the connection to its origin are diluted.
Lluvia Tea was born to bridge that disconnect. We wanted to treat tea the way the world treats wine or single-origin coffee where origin, craftsmanship, and quality truly matter. We source directly from our family estate in Assam, following our “Two Leaf & Bud” philosophy, so customers receive fresher, traceable tea that stays closer to its source.
Everything we create sits at the intersection of art, craft, and science. For us, being boutique isn’t about scale it’s about maintaining uncompromising standards while celebrating Assam’s extraordinary tea heritage.
Coming from a branding and marketing background, how has that experience shaped Lluvia Tea’s identity and growth?
Marketing taught me that people don’t just buy products they buy stories, trust, and identity.
Today’s consumers aren’t looking for just another tea brand; they’re looking for confidence in what they’re drinking. They want to know where their tea comes from, why it tastes different, and whether it’s genuinely worth paying more for.
Instead of asking customers to believe we’re premium because we say so, we educate them about what actually determines quality freshness, origin, leaf standard, and manufacturing. When consumers understand the problem, they naturally appreciate the solution.
Our positioning has always been origin-first. Rather than competing through discounts or generic claims, we focus on estate-direct sourcing, transparency, and helping customers experience tea the way it was meant to be enjoyed.
Lluvia Tea beautifully showcases Assam’s tea heritage. How do you balance authentic storytelling with maintaining exceptional quality?
Quality starts long before the tea reaches your cup.
One of the biggest challenges in the tea industry is that consumers rarely know how many hands their tea has passed through before they buy it. Every additional stage from auctions to warehouses to distributors can increase storage time and distance from the source.
By sourcing directly from our family estate and overseeing processing ourselves, we maintain greater control over quality, consistency, and freshness while giving customers complete visibility into where their tea comes from.
Beyond quality, we bring people closer to the gardens through storytelling. We share the rhythm of tea plucking, the craftsmanship behind processing, and the people who make every harvest possible. Rather than simply calling ourselves premium, we help customers understand and experience what makes Assam tea truly exceptional.
Sustainability is a key pillar of your brand. How do you integrate sustainability into your business while supporting local communities?
For us, sustainability isn’t a label it’s how we operate.
Estate-direct sourcing creates fairer, more transparent relationships while reducing unnecessary layers between the garden and the customer. That benefits growers through stronger value capture while giving consumers better traceability and closer quality control.
We’re equally committed to preserving Assam’s wider heritage by collaborating with local artisans and following responsible business practices backed by regulatory compliance.
As we grow, every decision is guided by one simple question: Does it protect the estate, the people, and the story we’re built on?
Lluvia Tea has expanded both internationally and across India. What have been your biggest learnings while scaling the brand?
Expanding internationally has reinforced that consistency, documentation, and trust matter just as much as exceptional tea.
While we’re building our export footprint across the UAE and the wider GCC region, we’ve also focused on strengthening our presence within India. Today, Lluvia Tea serves customers across more than 12 Indian cities through leading quick-commerce platforms including Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, BigBasket, and Foodstories, alongside major online marketplaces and our own D2C platform.
Being available across these channels has taught us how to combine operational excellence with premium brand building.
Whether someone enjoys Lluvia in Guwahati, Mumbai, Bangalore, Dubai, or London, our objective remains the same to deliver fresher, traceable Assam tea directly from its source, without unnecessary compromises between the garden and the cup.
You are actively involved with organizations like FICCI FLO, FIEO, FINER, Laghu Udyog Bharati, and GS10K Women. How have these networks contributed to your entrepreneurial journey?
Entrepreneurship is rarely a solo journey.
Platforms such as FICCI FLO, FIEO, FINER, Laghu Udyog Bharati, and GS10K Women have accelerated our learning, opened doors to meaningful partnerships, and strengthened our ability to scale.
They’ve also connected us with mentors, policymakers, and fellow entrepreneurs who have shared invaluable insights. Being part of these ecosystems has reinforced the importance of collaboration and continuous learning while building a purpose-driven business.
What have been some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced while building Lluvia Tea, and how have you overcome them?
Building a premium, origin-first brand in a highly commoditised category has been our biggest challenge. Competing with larger players while protecting quality, pricing, and brand values requires constant discipline.
At the same time, educating consumers has been equally important. Tea has long been treated as a commodity, so people rarely ask where it came from, how fresh it is, or how it was sourced. We’ve invested heavily in helping people understand why origin, freshness, and direct sourcing matter.
Today, that approach is beginning to pay off. Lluvia Tea is available across 12+ cities through leading quick-commerce platforms including Blinkit, Zepto, Swiggy Instamart, BigBasket, and Foodstories, while also serving customers through major online marketplaces and our own website.
For us, this growth is more than expanding distribution it means making fresher, estate-direct Assam tea accessible to more consumers without compromising on quality, authenticity, or the values we started with.
What advice would you give to aspiring entrepreneurs, especially women founders, who want to build purpose-driven brands?
Don’t dilute what makes you different.
Define the values you’ll never compromise on and defend them relentlessly. For Lluvia, those values are origin, quality, transparency, sustainability, and fair pricing.
For women founders especially, I’d say your roots are often your greatest competitive advantage. My journey from Singapore boardrooms back to an Assam tea estate became the foundation of our authenticity.
You don’t have to leave your story behind to build a global brand. In fact, your story is what makes your brand memorable. Global impact comes from telling your story so authentically that people everywhere want to become a part of it.
At BrilliantRead, we don’t just share startup stories; we bring you journeys that challenge perspectives, spark ideas, and fuel ambition. Every story we feature is carefully chosen to add real value, inspire action, and ignite possibility within our growing community of entrepreneurs and dreamers.
If you have a powerful story, one that can inspire, educate, or create impact, we want to hear from you.
