A Karbi Anglong Green Tea Grown, Made and Sold by the Women Who Pick It
In Assam's Karbi Anglong hills, a women-led collective now processes and sells its own labelled green tea, Premium Karbi Artisanal Green Tea, instead of handing raw leaf to an outside factory. It is a hill-grown Assam green a drinker can seek by name and know who made it.
There is now an Assam green tea a drinker can seek by name and know exactly whose hands made it. In the Karbi Anglong hills, a women-led collective has started processing and selling its own labelled leaf, equifarmtea's Premium Karbi Artisanal Green Tea, instead of handing raw leaf to an outside buyer, EastMojo reported.
More than 720 Rural Women Entrepreneurs (RWEs) across 82 village clusters work under the Udyamini programme, facilitated by the UK development charity Transform Trade with the tea enterprise equifarmtea as technical consultant, and marked International Tea Day on May 21 with the push into branded green tea. They draw leaf from family-run gardens in the Nilip, Bokajan and Rongmongve blocks, including Dolamara, Diliram Terang, Deihuri Rongpi and Men Teron villages, then carry it through processing and sale under their own label.
"Fostering greater participation of women in climate-resilient tea production is vital for the future of the industry," said Priya Engtipi, a member of the equifarmtea team.
"Through the collective processing of equifarmtea's Premium Karbi Artisanal Green Tea, these entrepreneurs are demonstrating that ecological restoration and sustainable community development go hand in hand," Engtipi said.
The Food and Agriculture Organization set this year's International Tea Day theme as "Sustaining Tea, Supporting Communities." Karbi Anglong sits in the hills south of the Brahmaputra floodplain, and its gardens are family plots, not the large CTC estates that supply most of the valley's tonnage. That is what is in the cup: a hill-grown green from a place that mostly sends its leaf away raw, now finished and labelled by the people who picked it.
Sources: EastMojo, "Women-led tea initiative marks International Tea Day in Karbi Anglong" (May 22, 2026); Food and Agriculture Organization, "International Tea Day 2026".