An American woman has become a millionaire through her ‘Chai business’. Brook Eddy, who is an ardent tea lover, in 2007 started a company called ‘Bhakti Chai’ in Colorado. Now, after 11 years, the company’s projected revenue is seven million dollars. An American weekly magazine reported that Eddy’s love for tea grew during her visit to India in 2002. After returning back home in 2006, she craved for the same brew that she had in India but since the local cafe’s in Colorado were nothing close to what Eddy had tasted in India.
It is then that she decided to build a company in 2006 and named it as Bhakti (devotion), and for this, she primarily visited India. She started selling mason jars with her one-of-a-kind infusion from the back of her car and in no time she had the huge fan following.
A year later in 2007, Bhakti Chai launched its first website and the company grew from a home-spun idea into a million dollar business.
“I’m a white girl born of hippie parents in Glenwood Springs, Colorado, and then raised in Michigan, right? I shouldn’t really have this pulse for India, but I do. I love the chaos and vibrancy. Every time I come I’m introduced to something new. It’s just real,” the report quoted Eddy as saying.
Eddy is a single mother of twins, who quit her full-time job, and dove into the process of bringing consumers a craft-brewed chai that was steeped in social and environmental change.
In 2014, Brook Eddy was on the top 5 finalist in the Entrepreneur Magazine’s “Entrepreneur Of The Year” award.
