About The Bald Man of Tea

A seasoned tea-taster & blender

Ketan Desai is also known as the Bald Man of Tea.

After a brief stint with the family tea business, he went on to work with some of the top tea planters, tasters, blenders and marketers in major tea producing and consuming countries across India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Russia, CIS, Continental Europe and WANA region. He started by learning about tea plantation and manufacture at various tea estates in North India before being promoted to Calcutta to work in international marketing. In the 1990s, he led bulk exports to Russia, Poland, Iran, Germany and the UK.

He is currently advising top CPG brands in India on how to remain relevant for new-age consumers through innovative products and experiential engagement.

Till April 2024, he was the Chief Tea Officer at VAHDAM. A seasoned tea-taster and blender, he headed tea buying and strategic procurement partnerships. He also guided NPD in creating innovative Specialty Tea and Botanical blends. He drove ESG and Sustainability, and scaled TEACH ME - the flagship CSR programme - to benefit 14,000 children in tea-estates.

During the first dotcom boom in 2000, he was instrumental in starting www.teauction.com - world's first B2B portal for auctioning of tea using digital platform. After successful launch in India, he introduced www.teauction.com in Sri Lanka, Indonesia and Bangladesh. In 2007, he started CHA - India's first chain of loose-leaf tea boutiques.

An MBA in Strategy from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, he is a keen and avid reader. His favourite authors include the three bards - Shakespeare, Tagore and Burns, besides Salman Rushdie, Amartya Sen and Aleksander Pushkin.

He shuttles between Mumbai and Kolkata - the city of Nobel laureates Rabindranath Tagore, Saint Teresa, Amartya Sen and countless other luminaries - and the city of his birth.