Nishchal Banskota

Nishchal Banskota is the CEO and co-founder of Nepal Tea Collective, a public benefit corporation dedicated to introducing high-quality Nepali orthodox tea to the global market. Coming from a family with deep roots in the tea industry, his father established their family farm in 1984. Banskota ran the business as a one-man operation for five years before expanding. Today, he leads the company from the United States while managing a team of ten in Nepal, working with multiple independent farms to preserve their geographical identity and help lift one million farmers out of poverty. Under his leadership, the company operates on a model of transparency, using QR codes to trace each package back to the specific farmers, and redistributes one percent of its top-line revenue back to those farmers to improve their wages.

In addition to global distribution, Banskota has pioneered immersive tea tourism in Nepal, a venture that began spontaneously after a successful Kickstarter campaign in 2017 raised fifty thousand dollars. He curates ten-day travel packages that allow international visitors to experience local culture and hand-process their own tea. His focus on empowering young tea makers and encouraging creative experimentation has led to significant international recognition, with the collective winning twelve global awards in recent years. Looking forward, Banskota is expanding into tea and food tourism, building glass sky domes in village tea gardens, and establishing a fulfillment center to package and distribute Nepali teas and spices worldwide.