TC360 is where India's ₹55,000 crore tea and coffee industry does business — not a directory, not a marketplace, but a credentialed professional ecosystem built on 12 years of institutional trust.
Three and a half million people work in the Indian tea sector. Hundreds of thousands more in coffee. Together they produce, process, grade, trade, export, brew and serve one of the world's most consumed commodities — and their professional infrastructure is a collection of unverified WhatsApp groups, trade fair business cards, and generic B2B portals that treat Assam CTC the same as automotive spare parts.
This is the gap TC360 was built to fill.
A grower in Jorhat and a broker in Kolkata have no credible way to establish professional standing before transacting. Anyone can claim expertise they don't have. There is no institutional check.
An estate manager looking for a certified tea taster has no dedicated channel. Apna lists thousands of general delivery jobs. LinkedIn is expensive and doesn't understand what a Q Grader or TCA Sommelier is. Industry hiring happens via referral chains.
When a Gulf importer wants to source 5MT of Assam CTC monthly, IndiaMART gives them a list of unverified suppliers with zero credentialing. The transaction requires weeks of due diligence that a verified supplier profile could eliminate instantly.
FSSAI circulars, Tea Board notifications, APEDA export guidelines, and customs duty changes arrive through different channels. There is no single source of compliance intelligence built specifically for tea and coffee operators.
India's café franchise sector is expanding rapidly. Brands like Chaayos, Chai Point, and Blue Tokai need verified investors. Investors need credible brand data. There is no institutional channel to make this match at scale.
India dominates global tea production and is a significant coffee exporter — yet the professionals who run this industry have no dedicated platform. They use tools designed for other industries, losing time and trust at every transaction.
The opportunity is not to build another B2B directory. It is to build the professional operating layer for an industry whose institutional trust infrastructure already exists through TCA — and simply needs a digital channel to deploy it.
Any competitor could build a tea marketplace in six months. No competitor can manufacture 12 years of ISO-certified institutional credibility. That is the moat.
IndiaMART can build a tea category. It cannot issue a TCA certification. A supplier badge on IndiaMART means someone paid for a listing. A TCA Verified badge on TC360 means someone passed an examination administered by India's oldest tea and coffee industry body.
Credibility in a trade industry is generational. TCA has been examining, certifying, and governing the tea and coffee trade since 2012. A funded startup cannot buy a decade of examination records and institutional relationships with Tea Board India, APEDA, and FSSAI.
TC360 and TCA share a single MySQL database. When TCA issues a certification, the TCA Verified badge appears on TC360 instantly — no API, no webhook, no sync job, no delay. No competitor can replicate this because it requires being the same institution.
The TCA Verified badge exists because institutions earn trust through repeated, standardised assessments over time — not through self-declaration or paid verification. TCA has been running examinations since 2012.
There is no 'verify my account' button on TC360. The badge appears when TCA writes a certification record to the shared database. There is no other path.
TC360 has no premium tier that grants the TCA Verified badge. The only way to earn it is to pass a TCA examination. Paying for a TC360 subscription does not change that.
The badge is rendered from a real-time database read of TCA's certification records. There is no badge graphic that can be applied to a profile. The data is either there or it isn't.
Verified members attract unverified professionals who want the badge. Unverified professionals enroll in TCA to earn it. TCA membership grows. TC360's verified network grows. The ecosystem is self-reinforcing.
TC360 Platform Vision Statement
By Year 3, TC360 should be the default platform where every professional decision in India's tea and coffee industry begins — whether hiring, sourcing, investing, or learning. Not one of several options. The default.
India is the Gulf's primary tea supplier. TC360's Trade Connect module is the foundation for becoming the institutional channel for this trade — with APEDA integration, verified supplier profiles, and eventually Arabic-language support for Gulf-side buyers.
As TC360 grows, the TCA Verified badge becomes more valuable. More verified members means better hiring, better sourcing, better matches — which attracts more professionals to seek TCA certification to access TC360's premium tier. The platform and the institution reinforce each other indefinitely.
Join the waitlist. Be part of the ecosystem that the industry has been missing for three decades.