What's The Brewhaha About?

Produced in the verdant Araku Valley in Andhra Pradesh and sold in cafés across Paris, Araku Coffee is the latest entrant to India’s growing third wave coffee scene. Arun Janardhan sits down with co-founder and director Manoj Kumar for a cup of the brew that’s as complex as making a Birkin bag

- Arun Janardhan

Manoj Kumar doesn’t have OCD, but when he sees things out of place – a tilted photo frame, for example – it bothers him a bit. Part of it can be explained by his passion for design and aesthetics. Or it could be because of his mathematical bent of mind, which means he prefers symmetry and order. Besides this, Kumar has a photographic memory and the ability to analyse body language; can speak and understand all four major South Indian languages; spends almost every week of the month in a different city; is an Akira Kurosawa fan; and, if his past could be extrapolated a little, could well have been an Indian version of James Bond.

Only, you would have to replace the shaken martini with a coffee, because Kumar loves the brew. Even if he drinks only two cups a day – occasionally three, if dinner involves fine wine – he can talk about it for hours, and then some.

The 50-year-old managing director of Naandi Foundation, which runs Araku Coffee, of which he is the co-founder and director, has a worthy story to tell. It’s a tale of a former banker, economist and counterintelligence operative who went off into the Naxal-influenced forests of Andhra Pradesh to encourage resident adivasis to grow coffee that now retails across France. The tale of an organically grown crop, a cooperatively run business and a shared economy among thousands of people.