Life Coach Jay Shetty Has a Growing Tea Empire With Joyo and Sama

In past lives, Jay Shetty was a Hindu monk, a digital strategist, a social media coach, and even a video producer for the Huffington Post.

He's since those leveraged experiences into a personal brand rooted in "purpose, service, and potential," Shetty said. 

These days, Shetty is known as a life coach, author and motivational speaker. He has a podcast called On Purpose, where he interviews guests like veteran investor Ray Dalio and YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki on their insights for leading a fulfilling life. He's the author of the New York Times bestseller, Think Like a Monk, and as of this January, 8 Rules of Love. Last year, he signed on as the Chief Purpose Officer for the meditation app, Calm.

In between all of that, he's also an entrepreneur,  building a line of wellness teas. 

In August, Shetty and his wife Radhi Devlukia-Shetty launched Joyo, a brand of ready-to-drink sparkling teas bubbling with adaptogens— plant substances that help the body deal with stress. Joyo is the couple's second brand of tea after launching Sama, a line of hot tea bags, in 2021. 

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Joyo is predominantly self-funded, but raised an undisclosed amount of seed funding from New Money Ventures, a consumer-focused fund based in Los Angeles. Both Joyo and Sama have also received investment from the brand incubator 100.co, which also incubated model Winnie Harlow's skincare brand Cay Skin. 

For someone like Shetty— who delves into topics ranging from mental health to relationships to productivity— the list of potential ventures he could launch runs long. Yet Shetty said he was always set on tea. 

"We do a lot online with my podcasts, with books, with content that provides a journey towards mental and emotional wellness and fitness," Shetty said. "I think providing products that we can actually consume in our bodies— we need to build that journey towards wellness as well."

Wading through a sea of celebrity competitors

At 5 to 30 calories a can, and containing adaptogens like reishi mushroom extract to fight fatigue, or Panax ginseng to improve cognitive function; Joyo is tapping into the global functional beverage market, which grew 12.7% in sales in 2022 according to data from research firm Nielsen. 

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The category includes healthier versions of flavored, sugary, or carbonated refreshments. Recess, an adaptogen-infused sparkling water brand, is a direct competitor to Joyo. Liquid Death, a canned water brand, was valued at $700 million during its Series D round in October 2022. 

Neha Kumar, co-founder of New Money Ventures who led the firm's investment in Joyo, told Insider that the functional beverage space is inundated by celebrity-founded brands. "A good number of these, the founders are not actively involved but more of a face to the brand where they receive equity," Kumar said. 

In April 2022, Beyonce invested in Lemon Perfect, a lemon water brand. In November 2022, the organic birch water brand Treo announced a partnership with the singer Jason Derulo. Olipop, the prebiotic soda brand, boasts a string of celebrity investors including actress Gwyneth Paltrow and singer Camila Cabello. 

Despite a growing number of celebrity competitors, Shetty and Devlukia-Shetty said they don't have any other products in pipeline right now and are only focused on expanding Joyo.

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Joyo launched direct-to-consumer on January 25, so customers can now order products online to any location in the United States. A pack of six retails for $19.95 or about $3.33 a can. 

But the brand initially launched in Erewhon, where it retails for a little more, $3.49 a can. The chain of high-end health food stores has become a landmark of LA's wellness obsessed culture over the years, and was generating almost $2500 in revenue per square foot in 2019, according to Forbes. The couple told Insider that Erewhon's target consumer aligns closely with Joyo, so their feedback will also be key to maintaining product-market fit as the brand scales.  

While some might say there's an irony in an ambassador of the spiritual world moonlighting as an entrepreneur, Shetty would disagree. 

"It's about redefining what we see as spiritual," he said, "because if spiritual people were not able to start ventures in businesses, chances are we would never hear about those ideas, and no one would ever have access to them." 

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