About Us

A Message from our Founder

I grew up in Shillong, but the food I remember most wasn't from there.

Every year I'd spend a month or two in Tamenglong, in the hills of Manipur, and that's where the food never had a label on it. The honey came from someone we knew. The chillies dried on someone's roof. Nobody called it organic or authentic because there wasn't any other kind. It was just food, made the way it had always been made.

Going back and forth like that, I think, is what made me notice. In the city you could buy anything, but the things from Tamenglong you couldn't really get anywhere else, and nobody outside seemed to know they existed.

Then I started paying attention to what gets sold elsewhere as "Northeast food," and I didn't really recognize it. Borrowed names. Sourcing nobody could explain. And the actual people whose food this is were just missing from the whole story.

So I started Tazai.

We're a Zeliangrong Naga brand, and we source the way the region actually works. King Chilli and ghost pepper, honey, and whatever each part of the Northeast happens to do best. Not one village pretending to be a whole region, but the real map of it.

I'm honestly not trying to build the biggest food company. I want to build one that does this properly. One that pays the people it sources from what they're owed, puts our own names and patterns on the jar, and earns a spot in your kitchen slowly, the way that kind of trust actually gets built.

We're only just starting out. I'd rather you watch us get it right than have me tell you we already have.

— Erailu, founder