The Road to success is never too easy, Cold Mountain started the venture when tea framers were almost disappearing from Nagaland, due to lack of, market avenues and connectivity, the nearest market to sell the leaves were at-least 100 km from the farm which doesn’t seem profitable, cutting down profits on transportation. 

Lanuakum Imchen, the founder of Cold Mountain was struggling to understand how to convert his father’s tea farm to function again and start earning. He started to study the problem and started looking for solutions in a different way where he decided to connect with tea board members and Toklia research center where he learned more about tea products and the ways to run a business out of it.

 After nearly two years of research and learning, Cold Mountain got its first break, which came as an order for hornbill Dec.2015.

“With just Rs. 3000 in hand I said ok, and made my first Cold Mountain label on a plain white sheet of paper and printed Cold Mountain on it, borrowed some packing pouches from my sister who was running a food processing unit, and that’s when Cold Mountain started its journey on 1^St, December 2015.”

 It was a nightmare getting your locally made products into the wholesale market in Dimapur, but with two shops and two online stores under the belt, Cold Mountain was in no mood abandoning the idea whatsoever.  With Just one person doing the whole thing from plucking, processing, packing, and marketing, 24hours of work seem less for Lanuakum. However, gradually things started to turn out good, as friends started to help and Church members volunteered to help during holidays, and slowly product range expanded with the number of stores.

 After a year of production, Cold Mountain was already delivering to 50 stores and 5 online shopping companies. Recently Lanuakum also took part in the Tata Steel Northeast Samvaad, where he spoke about Nagaland tea growers and how cold Mountain started the journey and also showcased their products as an inspiration to tribal People.

“My dream is to make Nagaland tea know to the world, and I have never doubted myself. Many profiting offers have come by to purchase the raw material and but I saw no one was interested in promoting Nagaland, that’s when I turned down the offers and chose to take the road less traveled”