Specialty tea brand Teamonk Global has raised funding from Mumbai-based Lead Angels Network, an angel investment platform.
Nalin Sood, CEO at Teamonk Global, said there is heightened consumer focus on health and wellness, and the firm with its wide portfolio of 100% natural, healthy and delicious teas, is well poised to leverage this trend.
“Teamonk is poised to emerge stronger after the current situation settles down,” he said. The company didn’t disclose the amount it raised.
Meanwhile, Sushanto Mitra, founder at Lead Angels, said the brand proposition of 100% pure and natural specialty teas focused on “Wellness” is especially relevant in a post COVID world.
New Delhi-based Teamonk was launched in 2016 by former Uniliver executives Ashok Mittal and Amit Dutta. It offers a range of natural fruit and flower based green teas like mango, hibiscus, chamomile apart from pure herb-based green teas and Japanese matcha Green tea.
The startup also sells herbal infusions like chamomile, turmeric ginger, peppermint, tulsi- ginger, etc. The brand is already available in the US, Canada and European markets, with plans to increase its global presence.
The company claims it raised $1 million in pre-series A round last year which was led by prominent angel investor Rajat Gupta and Roots Ventures.
Lead Angels, operated by Svaas Management Services Pvt. Ltd, was launched in 2014. The platform has showcased over 700 deals and invested in 30 early-stage startups including ShopKirana, SuprDaily and Planet Superheroes.
It typically facilitates angel deals worth Rs 1-2 crore each and some of the angels associated with the platform include Venkat Narayan from Aavishkaar Venture Management, Rahul Shah, investment director at Aditya Birla PE Advisors, and C Amarnath, professor emeritus at the IIIT-Bombay, and former head of the institute’s on-campus incubator SINE.
The platform provides full-stack services including compliance and governance requirements and the ability to raise growth capital to startups. It has a network of over 130 angel investors across Delhi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
Teamonk competes with the likes of speciality tea e-tailer Vahdam Teas Pvt. Ltd, Bengaluru- and Singapore-based AsianTeaxpress Pte. Ltd, which runs the specialty tea e-tailer Teabox.com.
In October last year, Venture capital firm Sixth Sense Ventures had led a Series C funding round in Delhi-based online retailer Vahdam Teas.
Teabox raised funding from Dubai-based NB Ventures, the family office of Neelesh Bhatnagar, in July last year. It also counts Accel and Singapore-based VC firm JAFCO Asia among its other backers.
In the broader tea retail sector, Tiger Global-backed Chaayos and Chai Point are among the other companies. In April 2018, Chai Point raised $20 million in a Series C round of funding led by private equity firm Paragon Partners.
