Walk through UmedMart's Tea & Coffee shelf and you'll find two packs sitting close together that both promise something better than plain chai: an "Elaichi Chaha" and a "Moringa Green Tea." They sound like cousins. They're not. One is your everyday cup of tea with cardamom added for aroma. The other isn't really tea at all in the black-tea sense — it's a herbal leaf infusion that happens to share a shelf tag. Knowing the difference in advance saves you from buying the wrong one, especially if you were hoping for a caffeine-light evening drink and end up with a stronger, milkier cup than you wanted.
Elaichi Tea: your usual chai, with cardamom doing the work
Two SHG-made options on UmedMart fall in this category, and they're built the same way: black tea leaves plus natural cardamom, meant to be boiled with milk and sugar exactly like any other chai at home.
VAVAR Elaichi Chaha comes from Jijamata Mahila Bachat Gat in Pune. The ingredient list is short — Assam tea leaves and natural cardamom — and the pack is 100 g for ₹148 (a 4-pack combo is also listed but was out of stock at the time of writing). It's part of the same VAVAR line as the Masala Chaha and Basundi Chaha we've written about separately, so if you've tried either of those, this is the cardamom sibling in the family.
BIRWADKAR FOODS Elaichi Tea comes from Laxmi SHG in Raigad district, in a larger 250 g pack for ₹253.46. Do the per-gram maths and the bigger pack works out a little cheaper per cup (roughly ₹1.01/g against VAVAR's ₹1.48/g) — worth knowing if you drink cardamom chai daily and want to stock up rather than restock every few weeks. The trade-off is the smaller VAVAR pack if you're trying it for the first time and don't want 250 g committed to an experiment.
Either way, preparation is identical to a normal cup of chai: boil water, add a spoon of the tea, let it simmer, add milk and sugar to taste, strain, and serve hot. Nothing about the process changes — cardamom just rides along with the tea leaves.
Moringa Green Tea: a different plant, a different routine
The moringa options, both from Sankalp SHG in Amaravati, are built around green tea and moringa leaf (locally known as shevga) rather than black tea, and the preparation is noticeably lighter — steeped, not boiled with milk.
WANKHADE NATURALS Moringa Green Tea is a loose blend of sun-dried moringa leaves and green tea, 30 g for ₹166. You steep a teaspoon in hot water for two to three minutes, strain, and drink it plain — no milk, though honey or lemon are fine if you want them.
WANKHADE Moringa Deep Green Tea Bags take the same moringa base and add tulsi, lemongrass, and ginger, packed as 15 tea bags (45 g) for ₹176. This is the more "instant" option of the two — no loose leaf to measure, just a bag in a cup of hot water — and the added herbs give it a more rounded, less single-note flavour than the plain moringa-green-tea blend. Availability on this one can be tight, since it moves through small SHG production runs; check the live listing before you order in bulk.
Between the two moringa products, the choice is really about convenience versus control: the tea bags work out a little cheaper per gram (₹176 for 45 g against ₹166 for 30 g of loose powder) and need no measuring, while the loose powder lets you decide exactly how strong or mild each cup is by how much you spoon in.
So which one do you actually want?
If what you're craving is a cardamom-scented version of the chai you already make every morning — milk, sugar, the whole routine — pick one of the Elaichi teas. If you're looking for something lighter to drink black, in the evening or alongside a meal, without dairy, the moringa blends are the better fit. They aren't interchangeable "wellness tea" options; they're built for two different cups.
One practical note either way: SHG-made teas like these are produced in small batches, so stock moves — some variants show as unavailable at any given time even when the product listing itself is live. It's worth checking current availability on each product page before you order.
Browse the full range in UmedMart's Tea & Coffee collection, including the flavoured tea masalas covered in our guide to tea masala and basundi chaha. Every tea on UmedMart is handmade by a women-led self-help group somewhere in Maharashtra — buying a pack, cardamom or moringa, goes directly back to that group.
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