If you only know Blue Tea from Shark Tank India, it is easy to assume the show is where the story began.
It wasn’t.
By the time founders Sunil Chandra Saha and Nitesh Singh walked onto the Shark Tank stage in 2023, they had already spent about five years building the business. The company had started in 2018, grown largely through its own efforts, and was already selling across multiple countries.
Today, Blue Tea has crossed 30 lakh+ customers.
But the interesting part isn't the number.
It's how they got there.
It started with a strange-looking flower
The story began with curiosity.
Nitesh came across an article about a naturally pink-coloured drink from South Asia. That led the founders down a rabbit hole: What was making the drink change colour?
They discovered butterfly pea flower, a traditional ingredient used in countries such as Thailand and Malaysia.
The first thought was simple: Could we bring this to India?
They initially considered importing it. Then reality hit. Importing the ingredient wasn't going to be an easy way to build a scalable business.
So they changed the plan.
Instead of importing the product, they started figuring out how to build the supply chain themselves.
The early years weren't glamorous
The founders have described those early days pretty honestly.
No big business background. Limited capital. No established market waiting for them.
In a 2026 reflection marking eight years of Blue Tea, Nitesh wrote that their first year brought around 5,000 orders. Today, the company says it processes around 5,000 orders a day.
That's not overnight success.
It's a lot of small decisions, repeated for years.
And instead of spending years trying to make herbal tea look like something it wasn't, the founders focused on making flower-based tea easier for people to discover and use.
Then came Shark Tank India
In February 2023, Sunil and Nitesh appeared on Shark Tank India Season 2.
That moment became a very visible part of Blue Tea's story.
But it wasn't the beginning of the growth story.
It was one chapter in it.
Three turning points that changed Blue Tea
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Finding butterfly pea flower: A curious discovery became the foundation for an entirely new product category in India.
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Building the supply chain: Instead of depending on imports, Blue Tea gradually moved towards sourcing from Indian farmers. The company now says it works with 600+ farmers, with around 90% being women.
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Building without waiting for celebrity validation: The business had already grown before Shark Tank. The founders' own account describes a journey from 5,000 orders in the first year to thousands of orders a day today.
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Using Shark Tank as a milestone, not a starting point: The Aman Gupta deal brought capital and visibility, but Blue Tea had already spent years building its products, supply chain and customer base.
So, is Blue Tea an Indian brand?
Yes.
Blue Tea is an Indian brand, manufactured and marketed by Redplum Private Limited, with its registered address in West Bengal. Its story today is closely tied to Indian farming and Ayurvedic flower-based teas.
And that may be the most important part of the journey.
The founders didn't set out to build a brand because herbal tea was trendy.
They saw something they believed India had overlooked: a beautiful, traditional ingredient and wondered if they could build something meaningful around it.
Years later, their ambition is still remarkably close to that original thought.
As the founders put it after their Shark Tank journey:
“We won’t stop until we can bring back the lost thousand years of glory, the ancient Ayurvedic Flower Tea to your doorstep.”
Thirty lakh customers later, the story is still being written.
