Between February and March last year, Mrityunjay Jalan—the fourth-generation owner of the Chota Tingrai Tea Estate in Assam, India—imported a Japanese machine that pulverizes tea leaves into matcha powder. It was an expensive purchase. Jalan spent the next few months working with Japanese experts to adjust the machine, originally built for Japanese cultivars, to process Assam tea leaves instead.
By June of this year, his estate had produced India’s first homegrown, commercial batch of matcha. In July, Jalan put the 5kg lot up for auction, where it sold for Rs 3,000 ($31) per kilogram.
That auction price is substantially higher than the average Rs 130–350 ($1.40–$3.70) for a kilogram of standard Assam tea. It’s even higher than this season’s most exceptional black tea lots, which topped out at Rs 1,100 ($11.50) per kilogram. But it’s still a fraction of what cafes in India are paying for Japanese matcha right now.
When Ashish D’abreo, the co-founder of specialty coffee chain Maverick & Farmer, first started serving matcha at its Goa and Bengaluru outlets a year and a half ago, he was sourcing it at Rs 11,000–13,000 ($115–$136) per kilo. More recently, his costs have risen to Rs 21,000-22,000 ($220–$230) per kilo. And he’s not the only one. At the Bengaluru-based Ela Matcha, founder Rachel David has consistently paid Rs 18,000–24,000 ($189–252) for a single kilogram of matcha.
Both are capitalizing on a trend that’s picked up fast in India. Since late 2024, a number of matcha-only bars and cafes have opened across the country’s bigger cities, while many more cafes and coffee chains have added matcha-based drinks to their existing menus. “The early trend began about two years ago, when Instagram created an excitement around matcha—where you have something that looks really good in whatever drink you put it in, as well as something that has some health benefits,” says D’abreo. “That’s really what helped it catch on.”
The country’s matcha market is currently estimated to be worth $104 million, according to Deloitte India, and is expected to grow to $167 million by 2030. Now, with the release of Chota Tingrai Tea Estate’s Assam-grown matcha, this could represent the beginning of a shift towards more homegrown versions. But will the country’s cafes and consumers welcome or reject India’s own matcha?
India’s Matcha Habit Comes at a Price
As in most parts of the world, the matcha trend in India relies entirely on imports. Most of the world’s matcha currently comes from Japan and China. With rising demand worldwide, and a consequent supply shortage, prices of matcha have skyrocketed. In India, the high price is further compounded by a 100% customs duty.
From the time he introduced it on the menu, D’abreo has been sourcing Maverick & Farmer’s matcha from Uji in Kyoto. More recently, the cafe has been trialing a tea grown in Kagoshima. But the switch, D’abreo says, has been driven not so much by high prices but rather concerns around freshness.
“A big issue with cafes is that matcha oxidizes pretty fast,” he says. “We procure in bulk and then repackage it into smaller batches for our outlets. In the process, there’s some exposure to oxygen.”
That oxygen exposure affects both color and flavor, turning the matcha from a vibrant green to a dull brown, and introducing a bitter note. The new vendor D’abreo is working with offers smaller 2g packs. “That way we keep the flavor absolutely intact. No oxidation, no change in color,” he says.
David opened Ela Matcha’s physical outlet this February after nearly a year of doing pop-up events around matcha. She’s sourced from Shizuoka since those early days, staying with the same vendor throughout. “If your supply chain is not sorted, that business is going to fail because everything eventually relies on the product and your ingredients,” she says. “So the minute I found a vendor that I could rely on, and it was good quality, I realized that this is something I wanted to go forward with.”
What Does India Want From Matcha?
From the start, David and D’abreo diverged in how they designed their menus around matcha. At Maverick & Farmer, alongside an iced matcha latte, D’abreo initially pushed the traditional Japanese preparation—“whisked matcha served either concentrated, like an espresso shot, or diluted with more hot water,” he says.
The results were mixed. “The one with the milk did pretty well, and unfortunately, the one that was just plain, where you really get to experience the flavor of matcha, didn’t go down too well. There was very limited uptake on that,” he says.
Even now, matcha in its original form makes up only 5–8% of the matcha beverages sold at the chain, though it draws loyal repeat customers. “I know people who, once they order the very traditional way of drinking matcha, keep coming back for that because they realize it’s actually very pleasant and creamy,” he says. But D’abreo has since leaned into visual appeal and flavor pairings, adding components like fruit compote foam to his matcha drinks to meet consumer expectations. “My learning is that the more colorful, the more vibrant, the more pretty the drink looks, the more people want to consume that,” he says.
At Ela Matcha, David skipped the traditional option altogether. “The Indian palate hasn’t gotten there yet—and it’s not fair to force something upon people,” she says. She serves matcha lattes infused with spices like turmeric and cinnamon, or blended with strawberry or banana, alongside a chai matcha and a South Indian filter coffee “dirty matcha.” In each of these drinks, matcha is one of several ingredients rather than the centerpiece.
For his part, D’abreo says he hopes that the craze for flavored or sweetened matcha drinks will pass. “We pay a lot for our matcha, and we would like our customers to eventually drink it just with hot water,” he says. But for Meher Kohli, co-founder of the Mumbai-based Tokyo Matcha Bar, high-quality matcha with “a strong, balanced flavor” is ideal with other ingredients—it needs to be potent enough to hold its own in milk-based lattes and desserts.
These disagreements about how matcha should taste and be used in drinks can complicate things for both businesses and consumers, and for growers seeking to market their products. Jalan says he has branded his first lot of matcha as “matcha Assamica,” to differentiate it from Japanese products, and says it is “primed for what the Indian customer wants right now.”
Indian consumers, he says, have experienced matcha only through lattes and desserts, where milk and sugar mask its natural umami intensity, and few have developed a taste for the traditional standalone preparation. “The grassy flavor profile that you get from a Japanese matcha is very strong. It’s a pungent, almost acquired taste,” Jalan says. “Whereas the matcha that we produce is a lot smoother. For the Indian palate, it’s an easier product to get used to.”
Currently, he’s targeting businesses looking for culinary-grade matcha to use in baked goods, lattes, and desserts. That includes hotels, restaurants, and cafes; confectionery businesses; and brands that are starting out on selling matcha but find the process of import difficult. In the long term, he hopes to perfect the quality of his matcha enough for it to be served as a standalone drink.
When that happens, Jalan also hopes to sell his matcha at a price that better reflects his cost of production. “As of now, because we still want the product to reach the market, we are okay selling it at the current price levels,” he says. He adds, however, that he’s already selling it to cafes in lots priced between Rs 5,000–5,500 ($53–$58), “which is more justifiable and matches the cost of production involved.”
A Cheaper Matcha Won’t Be Enough
Either way, lower prices alone are unlikely to draw Indian cafes toward a homegrown matcha option. “It takes a lot of resources to pick the right matcha, so I’m not expecting something that’s going to be drastically cheaper,” D’abreo says, though he admits that not having to pay a 100% customs duty would come as a relief.
What’ll really move the needle for him is quality. “It might not taste exactly like what we are now procuring, the Japanese grades of matcha. But if there is something that’s unique about Indian-produced matcha, I think that would be something good to showcase.” Kohli, too, says she would be open to trialing a homegrown option, but notes that any new product will require extensive food trials “to understand its flavor profile and how the ingredient can be used across our matcha ecosystem.”
David is more skeptical about whether the soil, climate, and the geography of Assam are conducive to producing the kind of matcha that Japan does. For his part, Jalan says that he spent a decade identifying local cultivars that, if treated the right way, would work for matcha production rather than the strong black tea that Assam is known for. Techniques such as careful shading of tea bushes, selective plucking, and meticulous processing can also impact the tea’s flavor.
David points to one reason why Indian-grown matcha may be welcome. “With the war and the situation being so volatile across the globe, it’s so hard to tell when there will be an issue with logistics or supply chain,” she says. “So the minute we figure it out and it is within our reach, it only makes life easier actually.”
For now, though, homegrown matcha in India has a long way to go. Chota Tingrai’s capacity of 5,000kg per year at full scale, with an initial target of 3,000kg, is a fraction of what cafes in India need to accommodate their growing matcha menus. And whether Jalan can consistently replicate that first batch remains to be seen as well, by his own admission.
“If the demand can support it, if our product is consistent, and we can maintain the quality standards, then we would happily introduce another line and double it in the next two to three years,” he says.
Photos courtesy of Maverick & Farmer and Ela Matcha.
