Roasted notes of success
From empowering the local indigenous community to combating deforestation, this specialty coffee brand sets a high bar for sustainable production and impact
THE opening of Araku Coffee’s cafe in Paris in 2017 marked India’s arrival on the world map of specialty coffee.
Internationally acclaimed for its quality, Araku Coffee has also reached more than 42 countries, including South Korea, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany and the United States.
This journey began in 2000, in the lush, biodiverse Araku Valley, located on the borders of Andhra Pradesh and Odisha. Here, the Naandi Foundation, an India-based social enterprise that tackles poverty, started working with the local Adivasi tribal communities.
Conscious of the communities’ unique cultural and historical heritage, the Naandi Foundation focused on understanding the communities and their environment, gradually introducing regenerative agriculture practices.
By 2005, the tribal farmers of Araku Valley were growing and improving the quality of their coffee crops with the support of the foundation. These farmers were provided with nutrient-rich compost, which made the fragile soil more fertile. The biodiverse terroir, combined with organic farming, resulted in coffee cherries with a natural sweetness and delicate fruity and floral aromas.
Coffee cultivation also provided year-round employment and better incomes for over 45,000 Adivasi families, marking the beginning of a sustainable livelihood.
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Becoming self-sustaining
Within 10 to 15 years, the valley transformed into the world’s largest tribal organic coffee farmers’ cooperative. The cooperative now has over 40,000 members, holds democratic elections, and has an executive body with 50 per cent women.
Massive annual forest festivals are held, which have resulted in the planting of 49 million trees, further enhancing the environmental benefits of shade-grown coffee. This type of coffee helps afforestation as it provides habitats for birds, which naturally prey on pests, reduces soil erosion and offers protection for the coffee trees.
Arakunomics, a sustainable economic model developed by Naandi Foundation, underpins this transformation. It focuses on empowering farmers, improving livelihoods, and protecting the environment. This model has been so impactful that it earned the Rockefeller Foundation’s Food System Vision Prize in 2020 and the Institute of Food Technologists’ Seeding the Future Prize in 2023.
Apart from coffee, the tribal farmers and their families are also growing other crops such as pepper, paddy, pulses and millets using the same organic regenerative agricultural methods.
Arakunomics is now being replicated in other parts of India with complex agrarian challenges, such as Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region, Punjab’s groundwater-depleted districts, and forgotten border areas in northern Uttar Pradesh.
From humble bean to specialty cup
Today, Araku Coffee has consistently high scores of above 90 out of 100 on the industry-recognised specialty coffee scale. Specialty coffee scores 80 points or more on the scale.
In the Araku Valley, over 20,000 farmer families come together for the Gems of Araku, an annual harvest festival that celebrates that season’s coffee microlots and the farmers’ contributions to creating world-class specialty coffee. Each season, over 1,800 micro-lots are evaluated by professional coffee cuppers using international cupping protocols.
Since 2009, this event has consistently helped improve coffee quality, farm and processing practices. Farmers are continually learning about their coffee terroirs to improve coffee bush health, build soil organic carbon, and regenerate the Araku Coffee landscape.
And the proof is in the cup. As the soils get richer and the coffee produces more complex flavour notes, the coffee score becomes higher, with top micro-lots achieving scores as high as 94 out of 100.
Buoyed by the success of the Paris cafe, Araku opened a first-of-its-kind large-format cafe in Bengaluru, India, in 2021, serving as both a coffee haven and an interactive cultural space. A restaurant followed in south Mumbai in 2023.
Araku Coffee’s journey reflects the intersection of globalisation and grassroots innovation – how the smallest farmer in a remote part of the world can reap the benefits. From its roots in a remote tribal community to becoming a premium luxury social enterprise, Araku has demonstrated how India can grow globally across the value chain. This excellence was further recognised when Araku Coffee was included in the government of India’s gift hamper for visiting heads of state at the G20 summit in 2023.
With further growth in the works, Araku Coffee is looking at making its mark in either North America or the Middle East.
The writer is head – global partnerships and strategy at Naandi Foundation
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