26-year-old Uppma Virdi migrated to Australia when she was an infant.
Today, she is popularly known as Chaiwali and has won the title of Business Woman of the Year at the 2016 Indian Australian Business and Community Awards (IABCA) at a glittering ceremony in Sydney in October.
While doing her day job at a law firm,Uppma started her tea business 'Chai Walli' which literally means a female tea seller, a little over two years ago. But she inherited her passion for tea from her grandfather, a doctor specialising in herbs and spices.
“My grandfather is an Ayurvedic doctor and he used to make this Ayurvedic tea at his medical dispensary. He taught me the art of Ayurvedic tea."
“Wherever I go I make tea… My parents' number one request is 'Uppma, make some tea.' When my brother got married, I think I would have made a thousand cups of tea for all the guests. Even when I went overseas to Austria on a scholarship, I used to make tea for everyone. It was a way of bringing people together," she says.
She decided to turn this into business.
"I decided to take it into my own hands and start my own tea business to share the Indian culture of tea.
“I started going to markets to share our family tea there. We always sold out and that’s when I realised, I had something special in my blends that I wanted to share with the wider Australian community,” she says.
