teabox | Pixr8 News

15Dec By PriyankaNo Comments

FUNDING

Tea Selling Startup Teabox Raises Fresh Funding From Ratan Tata, Others

Siliguri and Bengalure based online premium tea selling startup Teabox raised $7 million in a series B fresh round of funding from a clutch of investors including Accel Partners and Ratan Tata. The startup will use the funding to expand its geographic reach, and further penetrate in US. “Online and offline expansion will be a major area of focus for us. The US continues to be our biggest market, generating about 40% of our overall revenues, but we’ve also seen demand from India pick up considerably over the past year or so,” said Dugar. Teabox had earlier raised funding of $6 million in 2015 and the current round may further increase to $10 million as the talks still continue with the investors, a financial daily reported. Teabox currently ships tea to over 100 countries from its ...

A Meeting With Mr. Ratan Tata

My favorite story about Ratan Tata has to be the one where the Tatas bought Jaguar from Ford in 2008, and how as a Tata company, it became profitable once more. I think what converted it from a loss-making to profitable company was not just the TATA presence, but Mr. Ratan Tata’s ability to address its fundamental issue – he asked Jaguar what the problem was, found that they knew what needed to be fixed, and allowed them to fix it. An approach that has been the benchmark of the 90+ companies that make the TATA conglomerate. In the last week of December ‘15, Rohan, the Teabox Head of Inbound Marketing, and I found ourselves in Mumbai with an appointment to meet Mr. Ratan Tata himself. Needless to say, I was nervous. He’s a man I admire, as an industry leader and as a person, and it’s not e...

Ratan Tata Invests in Teabox, An Online Start-up That Sells Premium Teas

Singapore: Ratan Tata, who stepped down as the chairman of the $100 billion Tata Group in 2012, is taking a stake in an online start-up that sells premium teas, the latest example of the Indian businessman becoming an active venture capitalist in his retirement. Tata is putting an undisclosed amount of money into Teabox, an Indian start-up based in the foothills of the Himalayas. It’s the latest of about 25 personal investments that he has made in start-ups, helping spark an e-commerce boom in India along the way. His investments include stakes in three of India’s unicorns, or start-ups worth more than $1 billion, the ride-hailing app Ola, online retailer Snapdeal and a mobile payment venture called Paytm. He has also put money into Chinese smartphone maker Xiaomi Corp., the most hig...