Early on in my specialty coffee journey – as a little coffee lover who knew little more than Starbucks Blonde Roast – I was soon introduced to the concept of coffee branded with a plain origin. You know what I mean: we’re talking about mainstays like Hawaii’s Kona, Jamaica’s Blue Mountain and India’s Monsoon Malabar. Each of these coffees fascinated me with its uniqueness, even though at the time I knew nothing about trademarking origin or what special processing meant.
Soon my specialty coffee journey developed and I began to move away from those coffees that seemed to come from a simpler time. Why drink coffee named after a region when you can drink coffee from a specific farm and from a specific farmer working with a very specific variety of coffee?
Perhaps your coffee journey has been similar. But somewhere along the way, maybe a dozen years later, I bought a fresh bag of Indian coffee for the first time in a long time. It wasn’t just monsoon Malabar; it was Indian specialty coffee, which I knew because I had purchased it from a good roaster, among other high-quality roasters, and it came in an attractively designed bag. (Yes, marketing can even influence coffee writers.)
The coffee has been roasted Kaveri Coffee Factorybased in Berkeley, California. This got me thinking about Indian coffee – and what I may have missed about Indian coffee over the last decade or so. Kaveri is owned by Tanya Rao and she and I talked at length about India as a coffee-growing place. Rao is a third-generation coffee roaster – which is sporadic – and grew up in Bangalore, the capital of the Indian state of Karnataka, which is over 70% of domestic coffee production. She emigrated to the United States to pursue higher education, and after several circuitous career paths, she returned to her coffee roots. Today, Kaveria only sells coffee roasted in India. He explains, “By focusing on just one region, I can delve into the luxurious history and culture of Indian coffee and present a wide range of flavor profiles to suit many different tastes.”
Now I want it to be clear here that I am not saying that India is a recent, discovered or somehow unknown source in the industry, because it is not. India is the seventh largest coffee producing country in the world $1.29 billion export market (crossed the billion-dollar mark at the end of 2024). But his coffee is very much there exported to European countries (Italy, Germany and Belgium), with the United States’ share of just over 5% – compared to other parts of the world, Indian-grown coffee in the United States is relatively sporadic.
Kaveri isn’t the only American company focusing on Indian coffee. In Palm Beach, Florida, Chik Monk has a fully integrated supply chain – which is sporadic in the case of specialty coffees – from seeds, through the cup, to the café. Founded in 2019, the married co-founders each brought something to the table: Nandini Jayaprasad is a fifth-generation coffee specialist, and David Beil had a family background in fine-dining seafood restaurants, import/export, and fully integrated supply chains. When the duo finally got the courage to start Chik Monk, Beil says, they decided to follow the same principles as fine dining: taking a quality product, promoting its brand, increasing awareness of consumer education and then managing quality throughout the product chain.
Chik Monk imports coffee grown by Nandini Jayaprasad’s father, HB Jayaprasad on his own Balekola and Balupet estatesHB Jayaprasad was one of the people which helped India move from a state-owned merger system to a free market in 1994, thereby enabling individual estates to build their own brand, share their own stories and adopt recent methods. His properties are located at an altitude of approximately 1,300 meters above sea level, on steep slopes under a bulky canopy of trees, surrounded by native plants such as cardamom, jackfruit and mango. Instead of deforestation for short-term crops, the decision to allow rainforests to grow on land allowed HB Jayaprasad to create a natural, sustainable ecosystem that also supports Indian elephants and Todaywhich are sometimes called “Indian bison” and are highly endangered.
Growing up on family farms and observing the full and intense production process, Nandini Jayaprasad felt a personal connection and desire to spread the message of high-quality coffee from India. She discovered that Indian coffee in Europe has long been known for its high quality coffee, while in the U.S. the coffee’s reputation is just the beginning. “In the US, people are still learning about Indian coffee,” he tells me. “But everyone who tried it loved it and we got great feedback.” Customers often think that only tea is grown in India and are surprised how much they like the coffee. Chik Monk has organically built a local fan base and is now operating at full speed.
South Indian coffee company (SICC) is a vertically integrated specialty coffee company based in India. Founded in 2017 by married duo Komal Sable and Akshay Dashrath – fifth generation producers who also manage MOOLEH MANAY REAL ESTATE (where the coffee I purchased was grown!) – SICC boasts a network of over 30 coffee growers of various sizes, connecting them with roasters and importers abroad. Sable says recent grow partners are assessed holistically, beyond relying on cup performance, on characteristics such as a commitment to ecological resilience, a mighty sense of community integration and an openness to experimentation with post-harvest processes.
A characteristic feature of a company belonging to the supply chain is the research and development department, the so-called SICC laboratories. The lab is an crucial part of SICC’s work, Sable says, with much of it focused on “low-intervention coffee species like Excelsa, exploring genetics that can withstand the realities of climate change.” By leveraging existing practical experience at the field level, the goal of SICC Labs is to “combine scientific research and farmer-led applications in a exacting and accessible way.” Sable sees climate adaptation as an opportunity, not just a threat, adding that “Indian growers are already struggling with erratic rainfall, pest pressure and crop instability, but are rapidly innovating with post-harvest processing and climate adaptability.”
When asked what the main challenges are regarding India’s visibility as a specialist country of origin, Sable sums it up as a lag in perception. “India doesn’t always fit the conventional narrative of ‘romantic origins’ in the specialty industry,” he says. “We’ve been pigeonholed as commercial, even though we produce experimental natural products, farm wild species and rethink the soil-to-cup economy.”
Beil compares this challenge to Vietnam’s rebranding as a specialty coffee country, and I, too, see similarities: both are large-scale coffee-producing countries with a historic reputation in the specialty coffee industry for being commoditized and low-quality.
Rao says availability and supplies were among her biggest challenges. She found it complex to achieve full traceability and often contacted producers via Instagram or several degrees of mutual contact.
In addition, there is the classification system used by the Coffee Board of India and the names of hybrid varieties grown in the laboratory. “These varieties have names like Cauvery, Chandragiri, Selection 795, Selection 9 and are not known to coffee roasters or consumers in the U.S.,” he says. “It’s like a foreign language requiring translation.” Between growing up in India and spending time in the U.S., Rao finds himself in a unique position and feels compelled to be a translator and ambassador for Indian coffee.
Over the past five years, it has witnessed a significant and positive shift in the visibility of Indian coffee in the U.S., characterized by increased cultural representation in the industry and growing interest in its origins. Coupled with growth in exports and the domestic coffee shop market expected to double by 2030India’s share in the specialty coffee market is growing. And coffee? With proper care and baking – and the work of dedicated professionals like those I interviewed for this story – they are absolutely delicious.
