How a DTC tea brand became Shopify's partner in the fight against climate change

Shopify is committed to powering sustainable commerce by joining forces with dozens of climate entrepreneurs. Today, through our Sustainability Fund, we’re backing nine more carbon removal pioneers:

• Enhanced rock weathering: Alt Carbon (India), Flux (Kenya), Silica (Mexico)
• Mineralization: Anvil (US), Exterra (Canada)
• Direct air capture: Capture6 (US), Alithic (US)
• Biomass carbon removal and storage: NULIFE (Canada)
• Ocean alkalinity enhancement: Planeteers (Germany)

Among these trailblazers is Alt Carbon, an Indian startup led by Sparsh and Shrey Agarwal. 

The brothers aren’t new to the Shopify ecosystem. Three years ago, alongside childhood friend Ishaan Kanoria, they launched Dorje Teas to save their family’s four-generation tea estate from bankruptcy.

Reviving a 150-year-old tea business

In 2020, Sparsh and Shrey drove 16 hours home to Darjeeling to mark the end of their family’s tea estate—established in 1871—before it was put up for sale.

They were reminded of the magic of the estate, and everything it had given them during their childhood. “We had a dawning sense of realization that no help was coming. We were on the brink of losing it all and we knew we had to get involved,” says Shrey. 

The brothers—in their 20s and with degrees in hand—moved back to the tea estate full time, where they had no wifi and few friends.

Sparsh and Shrey spent the first twelve months diagnosing why the tea estate was struggling financially and building trust with the local community. They discovered margins were getting squeezed due to an overreliance on intermediaries selling their teas and competing on price with lower quality teas.

In 2021, the brothers launched Dorje Teas, a direct to consumer (DTC) ethical tea brand, scaling it to serve over 100,000 tea lovers in India. Now they’re going global with Shopify.

Solving a bigger challenge

Atypical heatwaves, hailstorms, and forest fires are impacting tea production. In response, the brothers founded Alt Carbon to improve soil resilience and fight climate change. 

Through a process called enhanced rock weathering, finely-ground rock spread on the soil captures carbon which travels through river networks to the ocean where it’s stored forever.

The brothers started with their own 2,000 hectare tea estate and have bold growth plans, targeting another 500,000 hectares in Northeast India by 2030. They’re also building a local lab to quantify Alt Carbon’s impact. It’s an impressive turnaround in just four short years.

Shopify’s ongoing commitment to sustainability

We’re on a mission to reverse climate change—and carbon removal is one way we’re working to achieve this. Since 2019, the Sustainability Fund has committed $70M+ to carbon removal companies, placing us in the top ten purchasers globally.

We’re not stopping there. Our Planet app launched in 2022 to help merchants offer carbon-neutral shipping with every order and companies are now using Shopify to sell carbon credits.

Building for the future means preserving our planet. Alongside innovative entrepreneurs like Sparsh and Shrey, we can fight climate change together.