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Drying coffee on raised beds to ensure even air circulation. Photo courtesy Classic Coffee
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At the Harley estate, guests can sign up for a specialty coffee trail. Here, they are on an early morning walk around the estate walk to learn about the produce.
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Coffee in Coorg. Photo courtesy IB Bopanna
The Indian coffee industry has long been focused on commodity trade. Unlike Indian tea, coffee here has made a different journey from producer to buyer and end customer. The idea of branding coffee or marketing various coffees according to origins and sensory characteristics is still pretty new.
To understand why is to get the backstory, which is that up until 1994 coffee pooling was enforced. Between 1947, when India became independent, until the 1990s, all coffee grown was pooled and sold by the coffee board. Once it left the farm, the growers had no idea what became of it, how much it fetched, or where it went. The erstwhile Soviet Union was a big market for Indian coffee, as it was for Indian tea; the disbanding of the Soviet Union took away that market. It was also the era of a newly liberalized India. The free sale quota, as it was called, opened with 25% and, over the next three years, coffee producers were able to market 100% of their production. The market had finally opened.
New markets, new coffees
New markets brought new challenges. Jacob Mammen, managing director of Badra Estates in Chikmagalur, says, “We had to educate ourselves. One of the buyers asked me to describe my coffee, and I didn’t know how to. I didn’t have the vocabulary for it.” Mammen talks about the long learning curve necessitated as coffee growers began to learn what to do with the beans post-harvest, how to find buyers, and how to approach meeting the needs of the market.
In Sakleshpur, about four hours from Bengaluru City, is the Harley estate, once owned by the British but purchased by Indian owners in 1950. Harley grows both arabica and robusta on 460 acres, with cardamom, vanilla, and areca as complementary crops. The Classic Group that owns Harley also the Kalledevarapura, which is situated in the iconic Bababudangiri hills, the birthplace of Indian coffee. Arabica is the main focus here.
Tapaswini Purnesh, who heads marketing and promotion, talks about how Classic chose to build its base in specialty coffee. What this also means is that the coffee is branded as Harley and Kalledevarapura estate coffee, whether in India or outside.
The brand created its own retail label for the domestic market. Tapaswini also talks about the changes that the open market brought to Indian coffee. She says Classic chose to go the route of specialty coffee and direct sales. “It works better. And even if we work with middlemen, it’s only with those connected with the buyers.”
In 2020, Indian newspapers carried a story on a new farmer producer organization called Biota Coorg, which had successfully made its first direct-export sale to Europe.
IB Bopanna, one of Biota’s founders, is a third-generation coffee grower himself. Two years ago, he returned to India after a long stint as senior global director for Coca-Cola’s coffee division in Atlanta, Georgia. Speaking to STiR about coffee marketing, Bopanna returns to history, musing about the time coffee had been relegated to the category of commodity. He calls the 1950s to the 1990s “the lost decades.” Returning to India, he found that although a lot of ground had been recovered and there were coffee growers selling direct and had turned to specialty coffee, it was only just getting started.
Bopanna points to some of the obvious advantages that Indian coffee has. “Since we India don’t have excess coffee to sell, it makes business sense to tap into the higher end of the segment,” he says, adding, “I am not saying we should cut out the middleman. The chain of custody plays an important role. We need the aggregators. However, when you go direct, when you skip many layers in the supply chain, you are able to capture more value, you get paid a fair return.”
Biota Coorg sent its first shipment to Germany, reportedly earning a premium of 15-20%. This farmer producer group is a collective of coffee growers who seek to make quality the incentive and treat coffee as a lifestyle product. “If everyone is selling to the bottom of the pyramid, quality is not the incentive,” Bopanna adds. Marketing to upmarket segments is a no-brainer but with the predominance of small farmers in coffee, the need to form a larger platform seemed not only logical but necessary. For Bopanna, so-called farmer producer’s organization (FPO) is an experiment that if it works as intended, can offer a roadmap to others in the industry.
Branding Indian coffees
In Badra, Mammen talks about “relationship coffees” and how his buyers come and spend time on his estate. When Starbucks opened in India, in 2012, the Seattle Times sent writers to India, and to Badra, too, where they spent time in the “labor lines,” as the workers quarters are referred to. Mammen’s Japanese buyers often partner on CSR pro-jects like a creche. There are collaborations with Germans on scientific research. The opening of the market has primed them for partnerships that are strengthened year after year.
This is echoed by Sunalini Menon, formerly of the Coffee Board of India and now a coffee consultant. She was instrumental in helping several growers, including Mammen, in filling the knowledge gap that emerged. The lack of marketing is evident, despite the fact that Araku Valley has achieved some success with it. But Araku’s success as a brand to reckon with first happened in France before India took notice. The Araku brand is rooted in the narrative of how the social enterprise has supported the tribal community, both their livelihood and their environment.
The rise of the roaster
However, it’s not just the story but it’s also the coffee that has changed with the times. “Can we please look beyond filter coffee?” asks Bopanna, referring to the popular coffee style consumed in south India.
As the specialty coffee segment grows among Indian coffee producers, conversations are moving past arabica and robusta. On Harley and Kalledevarapura there are full time coffee researchers who work on the field and factory.
“Specialty coffee is labor-intensive,” said Purnesh. “There are no shortcuts. We pick the berries at the very peak of ripeness.” Her company now offers 16 different types of specialty coffee, produced in volumes between 200 kgs and 1 tonne. They sound exotic, as slow dried by ice cube method, barrel-aged … coffee has well and truly entered another realm. The good news is that these cof-fees are finding takers willing to pay the right price.
Bridging the new coffees and the consumer is the roaster, a breed that’s rising and fulfilling a very important role in coffee consumption today. Every coffee producer agrees that specialty coffee is a very new and very small segment, no more than 5-6 years old in India and not occupying more than 5% of the market.
But the rise of the roasters has meant that the education needed for consumers to understand and try new coffees is made possible. The roasters have made coffee styles accessible. These are roasters who come with a love of coffee and an investment to see projects through. It has changed how coffee producers view domestic markets. Where earlier domestic buyers could not match the export prices, today they can, revealing how modern urban India has the appetite and the income for lifestyle products.
Of the new cafes coming up in India, Mammen says, with some wonder, “They have expensive equipment, they want to visit and see how we run. They are willing to pay the asking price.” Their success is a good sign. Bopanna agrees that cafes have spawned a new ecosystem. For the consumer, it means more options, like being able to roast at home, to access single-origin coffees, experimenting with different brewing styles.
The more-than-25-year journey of marketing Indian coffee has gone from having a single buyer on the coffee board to having an export and a domestic market today, facilitated by digital media. Says Purnesh, “Domestic or exports? We are keeping both.” This season, Classic’s specially processed arabica microlots were entirely bought up within India. She attributes this to the time invested in building the market and the arrival of the microroasters.
The farmer’s story
Marketing Indian coffee is finally finding more avenues, even if the brand and narrative is struggling to find its voice. There is work to be done to tell the story of every coffee and where it comes from. Today’s consumer wants to hear this story. Customers are asking for coffee by origin, by roast. They want to know where it’s grown, how it’s grown, the community and the environment. They speak the vocabulary, not of a lay person but of an interested and engaged follower whose loyalty is to be earned.
In Bangalore, Ramya Bopanna left her job to return to her roots in Coorg. Her venture, Belli the Farmer, with two other partners, began almost as a call to farming. Belli the Farmer is a “rural venture” one that Ramya chose in place of an FPO as she felt an FPO was too dependent on one person. But she is quick to add that her venture borrows best practices from the FPO model while building relationships with farmers. Using digital media as her marketing tool, her company has managed to reach an audience of 2,000 people, many of whom are her customers. She was clear that Belli the Farmer was a direct-to-consumer brand, offering higher prices to farmers.
Her decision to return to farming was to find a way to keep youth back in the village by giving them an economic opportunity. She speaks of job creation, or stopping the exodus to the city and of bringing back pride in farming. Sunalini points to the ways in which coffee farmers are connecting with the markets. Like the Biota Coorg FPO that brings them together, the cafes, many of which are started by farmers themselves, and the innovation in product itself. And the creation of a market within India, but also the Far East and the Middle East, all traditionally tea-drinking cultures with a growing interest in coffee.
Even as climate change and labor shortages add to the volatility of the coffee industry, there has never been a greater need to pivot, from commodity to specialty, from exports only to new markets wherever they may be, from being yet another source of coffee to becoming a brand that comes with a story like none other.