Origin Story
I spent my formative years in a small town in Uttar Pradesh called Bhadohi, known for its hand-knotted carpet industry. From early childhood, I preferred drinking beverages over consuming my nutrients through the tedious chore of chewing.
Cafe Coffee Day, incidentally started the year I was born, had become quite the craze by the time I was in my early teens. They had an outlet in Varanasi, and I passed one by during a visit to the ancient city. As I placed an order at the counter, I noticed a packet of coffee on sale. Thus far in life, I had only seen a Nescafe packet. It was also significantly more expensive than a typical sachet of coffee. Thrilled by the prospect of elevating my coffee-drinking experience, I promptly purchased the packet and was eager to get back home to try it.
I expect some of you already know where this is headed. I get home, heat some water and milk and add a spoonful of the coffee in a mug only to find it wouldn't dissolve like the coffee I was used to! How disappointing. But that was my introduction to the coffee bean.
Fast forward to 2017, my co-fellow at Teach for India convinced me to go for a coffee brewing workshop at Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters (and ditched me on the day). That workshop was like a new world opening up for me. As a Teach for India fellow on a stipend living in Mumbai, I decided to get into coffee brewing with a moka pot - a fairly economical way of getting into the otherwise fancy world of coffee brewing. Over seven years, I slowly amassed equipment and took great pleasure in brewing and serving good coffee to guests. But it was always a personal passion project.
In 2024, after quitting my job and walking the Camino de Santiago, I experienced many instances of spaces that allowed the community to come together, from plazas with cafes and pubs to 'donativo' hostels and cafes where pilgrims could stay the night or rest their weary bodies on the way to Santiago. It made me wonder why such spaces (also called 'third place') did not exist back home, particularly in the tier-2 and tier-3 cities. Over the weeks of walking and thinking, I experienced clarity on what I wanted to do next - create these spaces for the community to get together while introducing more people to speciality coffee.
India is a tea-drinking nation, and most people in tier-2 and tier-3 cities still think Nescafe is authentic coffee. So, there is a long way to go. I am first learning everything I can about speciality coffee and the coffee industry, by taking courses and perhaps even working with organisations to learn the basics of the trade - like green coffee sourcing and coffee roasting.
The purpose of writing this blog is to share my learning as I explore the world of speciality coffee. If you know someone interested in coffee, please share this blog with them. Or if you know someone in the coffee industry, I would love to connect with and learn from them.
