Born and educated in Hong Kong, Anita Harilela began her business career training at the Harilela Group of Companies, an empire built by her father, Hari Harilela, which included hotels, restaurants, and real estate on an international level.

Her career continued with jobs in diversified sectors such as stock brokering, publishing and television production. In 1988 Anita moved to the Philippines where she held the rights to design and manufacture t-shirts under The Beatles banner.

Moving to Brisbane, Australia in 1992, she was involved in the retail, wholesale and travel sector before embarking on a highly successful career in real estate sales in Australia’s largest and most renowned agencies.

In 2008, Anita started HY I.Q. International (HK) Ltd. and HY I.Q. Concepts (Australia), two companies that focused on supplying exclusive and unique products to the hospitality industry in Asia and Australia. In the same year, the companies secured the exclusive rights to market and distribute Bistro Tea, the most revolutionary award-winning tea product to hit the market, in Hong Kong, Singapore, Australia & New Zealand, with the Hong Kong office servicing the Southeast Asian market.

LifeAndStyle: Bistrotea is a highly innovative, award-winning product. How has overall customer response been so far?
Customer response has been overwhelming. The idea of being able to carry quality loose leaf tea and be able to brew it on the go has excited tea drinkers worldwide. Bistrotea eliminates the fuss and mess of teapots, and the time it takes to brew and steep a cup of tea. Whether you're on a plane, boat, at work, travelling... All you need is a cup of hot water. Stir your TPOD (Tea Portion of Design), the flavours will infuse, and you have just created the perfect cup of tea.

LifeAndStyle: Could you tell us a bit more about the type of tea that Bistrotea uses?
Bistrotea is single estate Ceylonese tea from Ceciliyan Estate, which has a unique climate that produces a rare sweet caramel-y full bodied brew. Our tea also comes from the Sanquar Estate, on the fringe of one of the last remaining rain forests, which is the oldest tea plantation. Part of this estate has been converted for organic tea cultivation.

LifeAndStyle: What would be some of the benefits of choosing Bistrotea over conventional teabags?
The main difference is that tea bags do not have tea leaves. The bags contain mostly tea dust, or the lowest quality tea leaves available. The bags are white, which means they are bleached and if you look at the contents of the ingredients you will find an abundance of colouring and artificial flavourings that are added.

For decades, we have been putting bleached bags full of tea dust and chemically enhanced flavours into hot water and thinking it was tea. That's not tea. Bistrotea is tea. Loose leaf. No colouring or flavouring. All our ingredients are natural. So when you brew Bistrotea, you are brewing real tea. Until now, discerning tea lovers would only use teabags if loose leaf tea was unavailable.

LifeAndStyle: What is Bistrotea Energy?
BistroEnergy is a new energy concoction that has extract of hibiscus and green tea and that is a natural energy drink, without the copious amounts of caffeine expected in other chemically-enhanced energy drinks.

LifeAndStyle: Will Bistrotea be releasing any new products in the near future?
Bistrotea currently have the nine available flavours. For black tea, there’s English Breakfast, Earl Grey and Apple Cinnamon. The green tea comes in Peppermint, Lemon Grass and Ginger. Our red teas come in Jasmine-Lotus, Strawberry and Vanilla Peach. We also have the Herbs N Honey range and the recently launched Fruit Berry which has an exotic mix of Goji berries and blackberries, an explosion of amazing flavours that excites the palate.

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