Meet our Members

BALD MAN OF TEA

Ketan Desai, also known as the Bald Man of Tea, is a tea professional and keen herbalist with over three decades of experience. Till recently, Ketan was the Chief Educator & Chief Tea Officer at VAHDAM. He now consults emerging and established brands with product development, procurement and growth strategy.

Ketan is a seasoned tea taster, blender and buyer, coming from a family that has been in tea for three generations. He was instrumental in launching the world's first B2B portal for online auctions of tea in 2000. In 2007, he started CHA - India's first chain of loose-leaf tea boutiques.

As a herbalist, he has been working with an eclectic array of ageless spices, ancient herbs, delicate flowers and dried fruits to develop herbal infusions and tisanes. He has developed award-winning tisanes like La Vie En Rose, Voila Vanilla, Ingenue Violet and Le French Earl Grey for EMILY IN PARIS as well as Pink Christmas Chai, Christmas White Tea, Spices Mulled Wine Tea and Rooibos Apple Pie Chai for Taj Mahal Tea House’s Festive Teas collection.

As a tea-evangelist and tea-educator, he regularly conducts educational and experiential workshops, passionately regaling audiences with fascinating stories of tea, herbs and spices followed tasting sessions where guests experience and appreciate the finer nuances of teas, herbs and spices

Ketan is based in Kolkata - the city of Nobel laureates Rabindranath Tagore, Saint Teresa, Amartya Sen and countless other luminaries - and the city of his birth.