Indian tea culture thriving in Assam, when a native from the province present, seeing some tea said, 'We have the plant growing wild in our jungles.'" It is then documented that the Assamese nobleman, Maniram Dutta Barua, (also known as Maniram Dewan) showed British surveyors existing fields used for tea cultivation and wild tea plants growing in the Assamese jungle. In the early 1820s, the British East India Company began large-scale production of tea in Assam, India, of a tea variety traditionally brewed by the Singpho tribe. In 1826, the British East India Company took over the region from the Ahom kings through
Nilgiri tea in South India. However, plantations only account for around 30% of tea production in Nilgiri District. The vast majority of production is undertaken by small growers, who typically own less than one hectare each. The majority of Nilgiri tea small growers are the Badagas, a local community of agriculturists. Tea plantations in Nilgiri District (as in other growing districts of India) typically own and operate their own processing factories. Small growers sell their tea as green leaf to "bought leaf factories", which are independently owned. (Although in recent years, some plantation factories have started buying green leaf from small growers)