Assam Interview: Prabir Banerjea, CEO of Wild Mahseer
My first ever trip to India’s magical and mysterious Northeast began with a phone call from Prabir Banerjea, the affable CEO of Wild Mahseer www.wildmahseer.com inviting me to visit and write about their amazing tea tourism venture. And so began a complex tour which took me through Assam and Nagaland with wonderfully varied experiences that I wrote about for the March 2020 edition of the Vistara inflight magazine. Wild Mahseer was our first stop and the springboard for our further adventures. My companions and I were just blown away by the luxurious experience of our three day stay in the Burra Bungalow redolent of a fabulous colonial past.
How did you people first hit upon the idea of tea tourism in Assam? Did you have any previous history or background in hospitality or travel?
This is just our way of giving back to the locals, specifically the Adivasi Tea Tribe and at the same time for me creating a very special British Assam tea plantation experience for our guests, personally having grown up in the tea world as a “tea kid” with incredibly happy experiences and memories. As a company we did have some previous experience with nature tourism through our pioneer effort the Wild Grass Lodge in Kaziranga so was able to draw on that knowledge in creating Wild Mahseer.
What is the nature of the relationship with the Addabarie Tea Estate? Is it a long lease that allows you to make structural alterations to the buildings? Are the refurbishment costs all borne by you?
The Wild Mahseer property is on a long-time lease taken from McLeod Russel, www.mcleodrussel.com one of the largest tea companies in the world and the former owners of the former Addabarie Tea Estate. The old and dilapidated infrastructure on the estate has been converted into six luxury bungalows, a common dining pavilion, a conference room and a facility specializing in the ethnic cuisines of the Eastern Himalayas spread over 22 acres. Our flagship “Burra Bungalow” has been certified as a Heritage Property by the Archeological Department.
We were impressed by the warmth and efficiency of your domestic staff. What issues do you face with recruitment, training and retention of local people?
Very few issues actually. You will be amazed to find how receptive and how willing to learn they are. Our guests will always find them with a naturally welcoming smile on their faces and no request is too big or difficult for them to handle. They are all the children/dependents of tea garden workers and we find that this kind of hospitality training is a great motivator and helps them move up the economic and social scale in their community and among their peer group.
What is the typical profile of your domestic and international visitors and how long do they stay for? What is it that you think they are looking for when they come to stay at Wild Mahseer?
One thing that all our guests, whether domestic or international, have in common is the desire to experience our rich and unique cultural and environmental heritage. We are in the midst of seven ethnic communities mainly Indo-Tibet and Indo-Myanmar in origin and then there are the Tea tribe communities who came a century ago from parts of Central India and Bengal. It is a potpourri of cultures set in a region of amazing diversity in both flora and fauna.
Since Wild Mahseer www.wildmahseer.com opened its doors in 2005 we have hosted almost 15,000 guests spanning a wide range of 42 countries. The popularity of tea and nature tourism has been growing steadily and in 2018-19 we had 3,500 visitors split roughly 85:15 between Indians and foreigners. For those keen on wildlife sightings, the preferred travel period is from October to May and from June to September is for the birdwatchers, nature, culture, history and tea enthusiasts.
The walk through the Eastern Botanic Ark was very informative. What are the sustainability initiatives that the Balipara Foundation is involved in? Who are the primary donors to the Foundation?
Glad you enjoyed it ! The Eastern Himalaya Botanic Arc has been curated over the years based on a bioresource audit of the local ecology, which now has over 100,000 trees and plants, which in turn has attracted significant numbers of pollinators, birds and butterflies.
The main mandate of the Balipara Foundation is the propagation, preservation and conservation of the environmental bio-diversity and the culture, heritage and traditions of the local ethnic communities, based on the principles of our proprietary Naturenomics™ model (the interdependence between nature and economics). We have embarked on a very large project on habitat management and natural asset creation which has involved the planting and management of over 5 million trees which has generated over Rs 1.3 crore of income to benefit over 10,000 people across 18 villages in the last two years.
We have also embarked on an Agroforestryprogram of using homestead gardens of community members in the villages as an alternate source of livelihood generation providing for year long harvests and have facilitated setting up of five ethnic homestays among the Mising, Garo, Bodo, Nyishi and Nepali communities. Our major supporters in our Rural Futures ventures are the TATA Trusts, HT Parekh Foundation, Axis Band Foundation, TATA Steel and the Ministry of Science & Technology, GOI.
How do you see the future for Wild Mahseer? Will you be developing other tea estates around the region?
Going beyond Covid-19, we see the future as quite bright because people are realizing the importance of nature and the close relationship between nature and human wellbeing. If things continue as anticipated with our pioneer Wild Mahseer venture we would like to expand our footprint and partner with other like minded organisations to expand operations to not only tea tourism but also to agri/farm and culture tourism.
