When Siblings join hands to Passion and Adventure.
They’re often our first partners in crime. The first ones to land us in trouble, also the first ones to cover up after us.
If you’ve had an older sibling, they were probably the ones who first took you to the serene, less visited Narnia of your area, and if you are the older one, you’ve probably tried fooling them into doing silly things, often just to satisfy your guilty pleasure of landing them in trouble.
You know you’ve found someone from your hood the first time you unanimously decided, “ We won’t tell mom about this.” The sibling bond is the most difficult to understand – it’s hot and it’s cold. You know you’ve hated, and loved your sibling at the same time. This personal yin-yang situation is perhaps what helps some siblings form the best business partnerships.
They grew up amongst lush green bushes sliding down terraced farms, to subtle smell of tea from their ancestral tea estate Chota Tingrai in Assam and tea, is indeed what binds the Jalan Siblings – Avantika and Mrityunjay.
The estate, owned and run by their family for over four generations is home to 2200 people. Avantika Jalan – the older of the two and Head of Sustainability at Jalan Industries, strongly believes in the idea of giving back to nature and society. So she started Mana Organics – an initiative set for sustainable development in rural India.
The Jalan siblings left behind their lucrative careers to get back to their heartland – the estate – and aim on practicing organic farming to make it completely sustainable.
The struggle to establish better, more sustainable forms of growing tea started at home for Avantika, when she had to convince the Senior Management to adopt a new, organic approach towards plantation. Soon enough, every new patch planted was organic. An approach that lead to better tasting, better smelling tea.
Mrityunjay too is responsible for change, and a rather peculiar one. The man responsible for bringing Matcha – a kind of powdered Japanese tea to India, super rich in antioxidants and consumed by monks that helped them meditate.
Matcha – full of amino acids, is made of the entire tealeaf, and not just brewed water, which contributes to achieving the fifth-sense, also called Umami.
Mrityunjay’s venture – Hara Green Tea factory (named after Mr. Hara of Japan) is creating a new market for a product that’s never been sold in the country before. Its pungent taste, and the rather satisfying after taste are making it a niche, yet favorable beverage amongst tea aficionados.
Taking of aficionados, some value taste, and some value experiences.
Bangalore based siblings – Shaina and Zubin Jagtiani are all up for trading in fun and adventure. Their venture – Red Spokes Cycling organizes group bicycle expeditions in and around the city, for the sheer joy of being outdoor, and appreciating little things in a world of mayhem.
Shaina and Zubin, coordinated like the two wheels of a bicycle, to start the Company in January 2014. Their initial voyage, a long distance cycling tour – ‘The Art of Wine Making’ is a ride to a vineyard little before Mysore.
As an engineer, Zubin confesses to have started cycling quite later on in life, but found the experience both physically and mentally thrilling. Shaina, the marketing mind behind the project, holds years of experience with media companies like Discovery TLC. What started off as an effort to rebuild personal mind-space and health, soon turned into an affair between friends, and friends of friends, and more friends, and then friends who became friends with those friends – basically, the biking community in Bangalore two-folded, before the venture came to an end.
Round one, of the passion driven sibling collaboration ended recently. However, the love they share for each other and the passion of riding hasn’t ended. The Jagtiani siblings intend on continue peddling away their passion for biking and organizing more group rides in future!
Working with your siblings cannot possibly be an easy task. There’s no one in the world that’s seen your dark side better. They know what mess you’re capable of landing in, they also know how to hold you by your hair and drag you out of it.
What binds the two sides of the coin is passion, what lies within. So, let TheVibe this Rakshabandhan be that of finding – old interests that bind you with your siblings, to create newer opportunities and memories together. They are, after all the best present our parents gave us.
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References: Header image credit. Article sources 1, 2, 3, 4.