Wagh Bakri Tea chief Piyush Desai conferred with lifetime achievement award

Guwahati, Jan 10 (PTI) Wagh Bakri Tea chairman Piyush Desai has been conferred with the lifetime achievement award by the North Eastern Tea Association (NETA), officials said on Saturday.

The group has been in the tea business since 1892.

''Desai is a patriarch of the Indian tea industry. There is a special bond between Assam and Gujarat due to the fact that Assam is the largest producer of tea and Gujarat is the largest consumer," NETA Advisor Bidyanand Barkakoty told PTI.

The association's immediate past chairman Ajay Dhandhania said Desai is a "tea tasting and evaluation expert and visionary in the industry".

Desai, a former chairman of the Federation of All India Tea Traders Association (FAITTA), an apex body of packers and traders of tea in the country, has rich experience of over six decades in the industry, he said.

NETA had earlier conferred the lifetime achievement award to two octogenarians – Apurba Kumar Barooah and Sagar Mehta, who had contributed to the tea industry and society at large. PTI DG DG BDC