Most Indian consumer-facing startups follow a familiar playbook: build a brand at home, find product-market fit, scale across India and then look overseas for growth. Global wellness brand VAHDAM took the opposite route.
Instead of first winning Indian consumers, it spent nearly a decade building its business across the globe. Only after proving that an Indian brand could sell premium teas and wellness products globally has it turned its attention to what could become its biggest market yet, India.
The strategy was unconventional, especially in 2015, when hardly anyone believed they could build consumer brands for global markets before winning at home. Bala Sarda, the founder of Vahdam Teas, was one of the rare ones.
“My bet was to build a digital-first brand out of New Delhi for consumers in markets such as the US, Canada, the UK and Australia,” Sarda said.
At the time, India was largely known as a supplier of commodities rather than premium consumer brands. Sarda believed in the power of the internet and that it could revolutionise how India trades.
More than a decade later, his bet has paid off.
Today, VAHDAM sells across more than 180 countries through its website, marketplaces and global retailers such as Costco and Walmart. The company has expanded beyond tea into coffee, herbal infusions and wellness supplements, with a portfolio of more than 250 SKUs built around Indian botanicals such as tulsi, moringa, ginger and brahmi. It closed FY26 with revenue of about ₹350 Cr and is profitable at both the EBITDA and PAT levels. Based on its April-June performance, it is also on track to cross ₹500 Cr in revenue in FY27.
But after spending nearly a decade building a global wellness business, VAHDAM is now preparing for “desh waapsi”.
Until recently, the country contributed less than 4% of the company’s revenue, with nearly 95-96% coming from international markets. The equation changed late last year, when VAHDAM set up a dedicated India team, began developing products specifically for Indian consumers and started treating the domestic market as a strategic priority rather than an extension of its global portfolio.
“The India business is already 2.5X larger than it was last year, and we are on track to reach a ₹100 Cr annual run rate by the end of FY27,” Sarda said.
Looking ahead, Sarda believes India can become the company’s next major growth engine. His ambition is to build a profitable ₹1,000 Cr wellness business by FY29, powered by preventive wellness products rooted in India’s herbs and botanicals.
However, Sarda’s journey has been anything but linear. Before VAHDAM could begin writing its India story, it had to survive one of the toughest down cycles in its history. A post-pandemic inventory crisis pushed the company into three years of losses and forced it to rethink demand planning, product launches and its approach to growth. That reset laid the foundation for VAHDAM’s next phase of expansion.
From Commodity Exports To Consumer Brands
Sarda never planned to join his family’s tea business. During his undergraduate years, he was running two student-led digital marketing ventures. When Sarda joined the family’s tea export business in 2012, he realised that India’s tea industry was largely exporting commodities instead of building consumer brands. As a digital marketer, he was quick to identify a big white space — Indians were just exporting and not building relations with the overseas end user
“I realised a massive opportunity to build an India-for-the-world story in the space,” he said. This became Sarda’s mission.
This is where his journey began. He invested in manufacturing, product development and quality control, while sourcing tea, coffee and botanicals directly from thousands of farmers across more than 20 states. Today, products are processed and packaged at its 1,25,000 sq ft facility before reaching consumers and global retailers.
Tea may have been the first product, but Sarda said the ambition was always to build a broader wellness brand. The shift is visible, with wellness-focused teas and herbal infusions now accounting for nearly 70% of VAHDAM’s tea business.
By FY21, the strategy worked flawlessly. VAHDAM had grown into a profitable business with around ₹160 Cr in revenue. The momentum, however, was interrupted by a post-pandemic correction, which forced the company to rethink its approach to growth.
The Crisis That Reshaped VAHDAM
Like many consumer brands, VAHDAM, too, saw a surge in ecommerce and wellness demand. However, when consumers returned to offline shopping, the company found itself buried under more inventory than the market could have absorbed. Between FY22 and FY24, it reported losses for three consecutive years.
The excess inventory forced the company to offer discounts, increase marketing spends to accelerate sales, absorb higher warehousing costs and eventually write down inventory. Together, these decisions hit VAHDAM’s FY23 bottom line by nearly ₹35 Cr.
Rather than treating the downturn as a temporary setback, Sarda rejigged the playbook. He shifted the focus from chasing revenue to improving the quality of growth. Demand planning became more disciplined, category expansion became more selective, and every new product had to clear a higher bar before being launched. While revenue remained largely flat between FY21 and FY25, the business was becoming operationally stronger underneath.
The reset helped VAHDAM return to profitability in FY25. With the business back in the black, the company turned its attention to the opportunity it had largely ignored for a decade: the Indian market.
Why India Matters
After spending a decade building a premium global wellness brand, Sarda said the company now has the products, brand equity and discipline to succeed back home.
Its India numbers tell a better story. “Within just three months of its formal India launch, VAHDAM crossed a ₹30-35 Cr annual run rate and now plans to triple that over the next 10 months,” Sarda said.
The opportunity, however, extends beyond tea. Sarda sees preventive wellness as the next phase of the company’s growth, with categories such as herbal supplements, functional beverages and botanical wellness products complementing its existing tea and coffee portfolio. This ambition now shapes the company’s India strategy. However, winning overseas and winning in India are two very different challenges.
Globally, VAHDAM built its business by competing with premium tea brands such as Tetley, Twinings and The Republic of Tea. In India, it enters a far more crowded market, where legacy FMCG companies, speciality tea and coffee brands, and digital-first wellness startups are all targeting the same segment of health-conscious consumers. Customer acquisition has also become significantly more expensive across marketplaces, quick commerce and digital platforms.
Yet, Sarda believes VAHDAM’s global experience gives it an edge. Rather than competing as just another tea or supplements brand, the company is positioning itself as a preventive wellness brand built around India’s herbs and botanicals.
Here is what its India strategy looks like:
The company is now building India-specific products, price points and assortments based on local preferences.
Instead of chasing offline distribution from the outset, VAHDAM plans to build consumer demand through its D2C website before expanding across marketplaces and quick commerce. Offline retail will become a larger focus only after the India business reaches meaningful scale.
The brand has reserved premium packs for its website, while marketplaces and quick commerce carry curated assortments.
While celebrities and influencers remain part of the marketing mix, Sarda expects future growth to come increasingly from nano creators and user-generated content, helping the brand build trust through authentic consumer advocacy.
Rather than expanding into every adjacent category, Sarda is focused on catering to everyday wellness needs such as sleep, stress, gut health and immunity through products built around natural herbs and botanicals. In simple terms, think of them more like Organic India than Twinings or Tetley.
For Sarda, the objective is not to become India’s next tea brand or supplements company. It is to build a trusted preventive wellness brand using the same disciplined approach that helped VAHDAM build a profitable business globally.
Road Ahead For VAHDAM
For Sarda, the next phase of VAHDAM’s journey is less about reinvention and more about disciplined execution. The brand plans to deepen its presence across teas, herbal supplements and functional wellness products while expanding distribution in India. Rather than diversifying aggressively, it intends to stay focused on categories where it believes it can build long-term consumer trust through India’s herbs and botanicals.
The challenge, however, will be very different from the one VAHDAM solved over the past decade. Unlike its early global journey, where it helped introduce Indian botanicals to international consumers, the company now enters a domestic market that is crowded with established FMCG brands, digital-first wellness startups and speciality tea and coffee players.
Sarda believes the company is entering a phase of strength. The disruptions of the past few years, from the pandemic to geopolitical shocks and shifting tariff regimes, have pushed VAHDAM to build a more resilient operating model. The focus now is on executing consistently rather than chasing growth. So, can VAHDAM replicate its global success in India?
[Edited by Shishir Parashar]
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