naara aaba

Born in the Ziro Valley, Tage Rita Takhe began on a lovely journey from Engineer to Founder of India's First Kiwi Winery with Naara Aaba. Driven by a strong vision of creating a fully scaled thriving community of farmers, skilled young, and women in the region, she established Northeast India as a wine tourist destination with a line of world-class premium wines made from locally grown organic fruits. Naara Aaba's journey began in 2017 with the purpose of creating market linkage for the underutilised kiwi fruits of the region that grew in abundance. Rita started procuring kiwis from the local farmers to make wine out of it. Prior to it, the region's kiwi farmers were not able to fetch proper market value for their produce, due to which the kiwis went to waste.

Naara Aaba is India's first organic kiwi wine brand producing premium fruit wines from organically grown kiwis, plums, wild apples, and pears sourced directly from Arunachal Pradesh's Ziro Valley farming community, without artificial additives, colours, or preservatives. The brand's mission goes beyond producing wine: it creates organised market linkage for Arunachal Pradesh's fruit farming communities, provides stable income for kiwi farmers who previously watched their produce go to waste, and establishes a wine tourism ecosystem in one of India's most culturally distinctive and least commercially developed regions.

Amount Asked: ₹50 lakhs Equity Offered: 5% Implied Pre-Money Valuation: ₹10 crore

Tage Rita walked into Season 2 Special Episode 51 as the most geographically unexpected Shark Tank presenter an engineer from Ziro Valley, Arunachal Pradesh, representing India's most remote entrepreneurship story and the country's most underrepresented regional economy in the Indian startup ecosystem. The pitch opened with Ziro Valley's natural abundance kiwis, plums, wild apples, pears growing in organic abundance in one of India's most pristine mountain environments and the commercial waste that occurred when the farming community could not find buyers at fair prices. The visual contrast between the valley's natural beauty and the economic underutilisation of its produce gave the pitch its most emotionally resonant foundation.

Aman Gupta exited citing the regulatory complexity of the alcohol beverage category the same concern that had driven exits in the Proost Beer pitch. Namita Thapar exited on regulatory and domain grounds pharmaceutical distribution and wine distribution are commercially disconnected despite both being licensed, regulated categories. Amit Jain exited on domain expertise grounds CarDekho's automotive marketplace provides no strategic value for a Northeast Indian fruit winery. Vineeta Singh was the most personally moved Shark as a D2C brand builder who understood the specific challenge of building a premium brand from a regionally distinctive story Vikas D. Nahar (Happilo) was the most strategically aligned guest Shark Happilo's health food and natural ingredients brand experience made Naara Aaba's organic, natural, fruit-based product portfolio an immediately comprehensible investment thesis.

Vineeta Singh and Vikas D. Nahar offered ₹50 lakhs for 5% equity and ₹25 lakhs debt at 10% interest. The founders accepted and the deal was secured. The deal matched the founders' original equity ask (5%) at the same capital amount (₹50 lakhs) with an additional ₹25 lakhs debt component at 10% interest total investment ₹75 lakhs at ₹10 crore implied company valuation. The founders accepted without negotiation a clean, no-counter deal that reflected both the founders' satisfaction with the terms and their appreciation that Vineeta and Vikas were the most strategically aligned investors on the panel.

Tage Rita Takhe accepted Vineeta Singh and Vikas D. Nahar's joint offer of ₹50 lakhs for 5% equity plus ₹25 lakhs debt at 10% interest valuing Naara Aaba at ₹10 crore. The deal was Season 2 Special Episode 51's most regionally pioneering investment backing India's first organic kiwi wine brand from one of the country's most economically underserved states, with two Sharks whose food and beverage brand expertise most directly applied to Naara Aaba's distribution and brand development needs.

In addition to producing kiwi wines today, the winery has now broadened its selection to include other fruit varieties like plums, wild apples, and pears. Tourists are welcome to visit the winery and partake in wine tastings while there. This year, they intend to introduce their wines in additional states, including Assam. The wine tourism offering at the Ziro Valley winery gives Naara Aaba a revenue stream that conventional beverage brands cannot replicate visitors who travel to Arunachal Pradesh and experience the winery in its natural setting become the brand's most passionate ambassadors, generating word-of-mouth that extends the brand's reach far beyond what distribution alone could achieve.