Meet the Women Behind Your Nepali Tea

At Sandakphu Tea — the small factory in eastern Nepal where many of our award-winning teas are made — the people sorting, processing, and tasting the leaf are mostly women. In a country where women in the tea industry typically work in the fields but rarely in leadership, Sandakphu is rewriting that story. Today we want you to meet two of the women making that happen.

Twistina Subba — Founder & Chairperson

Twistina Subba is the founder and Chairperson of Sandakphu Tea. She's also the wife of Chandra Bhushan Subba, a pioneer of Nepal's modern tea industry. After their marriage, Twistina left her engineering career in India to join her husband in Nepal — a decision that, decades later, would reshape an entire region's tea industry.

In her early years in Nepal, she worked as a teacher to give time to her son and family. But amid that, something was building. Coming from a matrilineal society herself, she found it hard to accept that women in Nepal — especially in rural areas — were struggling to find their place in society, even within their own homes.

Financial independence in women is the core to giving them a better place in society — starting from the family itself.

Eventually, the idea of tea came to her. With her husband's expertise, she launched a tea factory in the remote village of Jasbire with one founding principle: women would get a fair chance at every level of the operation. In a country where female workers are still seen as inferior — where attempts to promote women to positions of authority have been a major challenge — this was, and is, radical.

Today, Sandakphu's factory is run by women under the guidance of expert tea makers. All field-based finance is controlled by women. The teas are made by a female master tea maker with the support of male machinery experts. Twistina's vision became infrastructure.

Bimala Mukhia — Master Tea Maker

Bimala Mukhia is a native of Jasbire village. She got married at 18. Her husband left her a few years later, with a four-year-old daughter.

Being a single mother in a small Nepali village isn't easy. Bimala struggled both physically and financially to raise and educate her daughter. Her parents helped where they could. But her daughter was growing, and growing children need schools. That's when Sandakphu offered her a job: assistant to the tea maker.

The work let her send her daughter to boarding school in Ilam.

But being a woman in a male-dominated workplace meant pushback. After about a year, the prevailing dominance pushed her out — she had to leave the job. Sandakphu, true to its founding principle, made a harsh decision: they kept her over the male tea maker. That decision gave Bimala the chance to work independently.

That was over a decade ago. Since then, under the tutelage of Chandra Bhushan Subba, Bimala has become one of the few — if not the only — female master tea makers in Nepal. She's skilled in making multiple types of teas. She manages factory operations. She handles field-based finance directly with farmers, under Twistina's supervision. She knows the staff and the local farmers by name.

When you brew a cup of our award-winning Sandakphu tea, Bimala's hands made it.

One of those teas is our Himalayan Golden Black Tea — hand-plucked at 7,500 feet, with the prominent golden tips that made it a Gold winner at The Leafies and a New York Times feature.

Why This Matters

When we say Nepali Tea Traders is a woman-owned company, we mean it on both sides of the supply chain. Sunita Karrma co-owns the brand in the U.S. Twistina Subba and Bimala Mukhia lead the operation in Nepal. The supply chain that brings our tea from Ilam to your cup is built almost entirely by women, on principle.

This is what your purchase supports. Not as marketing — as infrastructure.

— Sunita Karrma & Rabin M Joshi
Co-Owners, Nepali Tea Traders