Tag Archives: HumbleBean Coffee

Uplift of Small Farmers drives this Bengaluru Coffee Start-up

Ex-banker Soomanna Mandepanda and his wife, Puja Soomanna set up their startup Humblebean in 2017 to ensure better prices and reach for small coffee farmers and improve every part of the value chain.

Uplift of small farmers drives this Bengaluru coffee startup

For former banker Soomanna Mandepanda, the motivation for setting up Humblebean was not just to sell the best coffees, but more importantly, uplift the small and medium Indian farmers who grow them. 

In the process, he is trying to bring about changes at almost each stage of the business — from cultivation and supply chain to research and education. 

Founded in 2017 by Soomanna and his wife and former Yahoo executive Puja Soomanna, Bengaluru-based Humblebean works on an omnichannel model: It ties up with small coffee farmers in south India, roasts and grounds supply, provides the beans to roasters, exports its products, operates brew bars, and has an online presence. 

A responsible way to grow coffee 

The coffee drinking experience has been gaining traction in India, with the market for the brew expected to record a compound annual growth rate of 7.2 percent during 2021-25, according to a January 2021 Statista report. 

Startups including Sleepy Owl, The Flying Squirrel, and Coffeeza, as well as shops such as Third Wave Coffee Roasters are making their presence felt in the market. 

India is the world’s sixth-largest producer of coffee and fifth in terms of exports; in fact, 70 percent of its production is exported, says a January 2021 report by the India Brand Equity Foundation. Yet, Soomanna says, “a lot of small and medium farmers and farms aren’t getting the kind of business and reach they should”. 

Soomanna would know: he spent most of his childhood on the coffee estates of Coorg and was a small farmer before moving to the world of finance and banking for 13 years. One way to correct the imbalance, he says, is by “making great biodiverse coffee that farms in India are already poised to do”.  

According to him, 80-90 percent of coffee farms in India are held by small and medium farmers, whose secondary income comes from crops such as jackfruit, avocado, pepper, and orange that are part of the same farms. 

Cultivating other crops alongside coffee “ensures automatic carbon sequestration, top soil replenishment, and lesser need to feed chemicals unlike commercial crops grown in other countries”, says Soomanna. “The mining of the minerals is automatic and you become carbon neutral.” 

Humblebean
Puja Soomanna

Advocating farmer-friendly norms 

Increasingly popular among young consumers are organic, speciality, and Rainforest Alliance coffees that respectively employ natural methods of cultivation dispensing with harmful chemicals, are of the highest grade being derived from a single origin or single estate, and protect the environment as well as worker rights. 

However, in India these certified varieties are grown largely on rich estates; most small and medium farmers cannot afford the costly certifications and grades.   

Coffee cultivation and the business are still quite unorganised in India, the certifications cost a lot of money, and need constant follow-ups, says Soomanna. 

“The norms are difficult to adhere to for most small farmers. It is a replication of an American model.”

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He says most large corporations in India export to Europe. “The small companies in Hassan, Chikmagalur, etc. certify about 150 estates and add the tags. But the farmer doesn’t get the price because the better prices are still being fetched with the local trader. The local traders are important, but the real traceability is lost.” 

As farmers don’t get better prices, there is little driving them to improve their produce, he says. “Speciality coffee is something few farmers can afford to grow.” 

Hence, the need to bring in farmer-friendly rules, he says.

Humblebean
The Humblebean coffee

Promoting social value investing

Given the largely unorganised state of affairs, Humblebean focused on getting farmers on board. The team collected random samples, tasted them, and guided farmers on growing the beans in a better way. 

By 2018, the team had got 50-60 farmers on board and given them assessment reports free of cost. Until then, the startup was in its pre-revenue stages, bootstrapped with funds from family and friends. 

The team then focused on getting roasters to directly buy from farmers. For this, it adopted the idea of social value investing, in which everyone who is part of the value chain comes together to solve a problem and there is money in it for all. 

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“Once we got the farmers on board, we decided to tie up with brands and introduce them to the new portfolios of coffees,” says Soomanna. “We incubated close to four different brands in India from scratch to start a unique brand with a different blend. The idea was to bring in multiple partnerships and inclusiveness in the farming community on one platform.” 

Most of the speciality coffee firms have restricted names and types of beans grown on particular estates. “The idea is to bring in more brands that can access different estates, work with them, and encourage the farmers,” says Soomanna. 

Humblebean also fulfils the complete roast and ground process for such brands and even gives them a credit facility, he says. 

Humblebean

Quality comes with education 

Towards the end of 2018 and early 2019, the Humblebean team found that coffees served at most star hotels weren’t up to the mark. 

One of the reasons for this, Soomanna says, is that coffee as education is lacking in hotel management schools: one has to go to Italy to learn more about its nuances. The Coffee Board of India mostly takes care of the functionality, he says. 

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“We met a few management schools and after some discussions it was decided that the colleges would look at it as part of the curriculum,” says Soomanna. 

Brewing innovative Indian blends

Even as Humblebean works to improve every part of the value chain, it is trying to offer consumers a very Indian coffee drinking experience.

To that end, the startup opened its first Brew Bar in the food experience section of a workspace on Bengaluru’s Residency Road in 2019. Humblebean was one of the early members of that workspace set up by a Singapore-based company. 

Puja, who conceptualised Brew Bar, spent time innovating the blends with the use of Indian robustas.  

“We don’t serve a single cup of speciality coffee; we wanted to make sure through the brewing methods can small and medium farmers come into mainstream brewing?” says Soomanna. 

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He says these Indian blends “aren’t being used by a single new-age speciality coffee company” as they are considered “harsh and used as a filler across the world. But they are unique and you need great expertise and experience to make a robusta out of them”. 

Following research and development, the startup has also come up with its own set of products. Together with B2B partners, it has launched these products online and will soon sell them at other marketplaces. The range is priced at Rs 220-350 for 250 gm for limited editions and depending on the roast. 

“Indian coffees can have a global impact,” says Soomanna. “The idea is to be farmer-friendly and also not cause too much environmental damage. We want to bring an amazing cup of coffee from the farms the way it should be drunk.”

Edited by Lena Saha

source: http://www.yourstory.com / YourStory / Home> / by Sindhu Kashyaap / edited by Lena Saha / February 07th, 2021

Know Thy Coffee: HumbleBean is on a Mission to Spread Coffee Literacy

Bengaluru-based omnichannel coffee startup HumbleBean Coffee has launched a Coffee Academy in Coorg to educate people about the ‘complexity and diversity of a humble bean like coffee’.

Know thy Coffee: HumbleBean is on a mission to spread coffee literacy

Bimal might seem like a regular barista. But he’s not content to simply brew and serve cups of coffee. He wants every customer to know what they are going to sip. 

“I make sure they know their cup of coffee. I ask about the kind of taste they are looking for, and how strong they want their coffee. Most of the time, they go ahead with what I recommend even if they have something else in mind,” he says.

After losing his job at a high-end restaurant during the pandemic, Bimal joined HumbleBean Coffee as a barista. With no prior expertise in the sector, he was enrolled in a specialised course at HumbleBean. The course helped him understand the beverage better—starting from its plantation to the multiple brewing methods. 

HumbleBean Coffee runs a small brew bar tucked away under the lush green cover of Bengaluru’s Lavelle Road. On a regular day, you might find Bimal sniffing and tasting a sample from every cup he brews.

HumbleBean Coffeeis the brainchild of Soomanna Mandepanda and Puja Soomanna. Since 2017, the couple has been on a mission to make coffee consumption a more enjoyable and mindful experience. Their idea is to educate more people about the complexity and diversity “of a humble bean like coffee”. 

In 2021, they launched the HumbleBean Coffee Academy in Coorg to spread coffee literacy among the masses. The academy offers short-term courses for coffee enthusiasts, home brewers, students pursuing hotel management, and coffee entrepreneurs. 

The team of 22 people, including the co-founders, brew bar staff, and coffee academy experts, is based in Coorg and Bengaluru. At present, HumbleBean has only one coffee brew bar in Bengaluru and an online B2C channel that sells coffee beans of different types and roasts. A new coffee concept store is underway in Indiranagar which would replace the manual brew bar in a few weeks’ time. 

As per filings with the Registrar of Companies, HumbleBean made a revenue of approximately Rs 1.1 crore in FY21. 

In July 2022, the coffee startup raised an angel round of Rs 4.5 crore from undisclosed investors. 

Today, as Soomanna, Co-founder of HumbleBean, prepares his favourite pour-over, he recalls the days when he felt the need to clean up the coffee ecosystem. 

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“I wanted to get into the coffee ecosystem to build an Indian coffee company of global standards. I also wanted to orient farmers towards quality and help them to stay invested in agriculture,” he says. 

HumbleBean
HumbleBean Academy, Coorg

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Spreading coffee literacy

The main objective behind the coffee academy was to ensure everyone in the coffee ecosystem was well informed about the beverage.

The team began by addressing the absence of a feedback system for farmers who grow coffee. A feedback mechanism was essential to bring changes in their farming practices and improve the quality of the produce. 

“More than 85% of coffee farmers in India, mostly small and medium farmers, have never tasted their own coffee. They are unaware of how their coffee is appreciated around the world,” Soomanna says.

The coffee academy receives free coffee samples from more than 100 farmers across the country. The team prepares extensive reports on the sample quality and offers suggestions to farmers. The farmers bring in suggested changes in farming techniques and send new samples to the academy for further assessment.

“We test the samples again and buy their lot if the quality matches our parameters. Most of the time, we ask the farmers to quote a price instead of us fixing the price,” says Puja, Co-founder of HumbleBean, who looks after the B2C and hospitality side of HumbleBean. 

The academy offers courses that focus on the art of brewing, food pairing with coffee, and more. These courses can be as short as one day or three days (for beverage enthusiasts) or as long as three months (for students in hotel management colleges). They are priced between Rs 10,000 and Rs 35,000.

HumbleBean has collaborated with a hotel management college in India to offer these courses for a semester. 

Puja believes there is a need to train baristas in the early years of hotel management. 

“Being a barista is more than serving a cup of coffee, especially today when manual brewing is finally getting recognised. That’s why we deliberately choose people who do not have any knowledge of coffee and are more receptive to knowledge,” she says.

Puja looks after the barista training course with Gaurav Ganapathi. A certified Q grader (a type of coffee evaluator), Gaurav leads the Coffee Academy in Coorg. He has been in the coffee industry since 2014 and previously worked with Tata Starbucks. 

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“Coffee is one of the most sustainable industries in the world; there is almost no carbon emission in the production process. The coffee academy is helping everyone in the ecosystem understand coffee as a plant better—its diversity in terms of species and types, different brewing techniques, and more,” Gaurav says.

Pastry chef Sana Kabra, who joined the HumbleBean team in March 2022, works closely with Puja and Gaurav and leads the food pairing courses at HumbleBean.

“Food pairing is an important part of the coffee experience. What kind of pastry would go best with a pour-over, what should be the level of the roast or grind of your coffee to make it go well with a croissant…these things require mindful consumption and a lot of trial and error,” Sana says. 

HumbleBean

Overcoming the pandemic

Like any other brick-and-mortar business, HumbleBean was hit hard by the pandemic. Their first manual brew bar in Residency Road, Bengaluru, launched in 2019, was shut down due to operational difficulties.

Around the same time, the brand collaborated with a high-end retail outfit GoNative to set up its model brew bar on Lavelle Road.

The HumbleBean team took the pandemic as an opportunity to study and gather data about customer perception of manually brewed coffees, and coffees served from small and medium farms, and studied the unit economics of a coffee brand. They also worked on creating a range of coffee beverages and the delivery mechanism.

“During this lean time, we also consolidated our backend work, the academy, small and medium farm outreach, plantation management, flavour science with regards to food pairing along with coffee. We built a solid core team of subject matter specialists in plantation management, roasting, and flavour science. Most of them are third-generation small farmers who have spent time in large coffee companies,” Soomanna says.

Brewing a bright future

According to a report published by Research and Markets, Indian retail coffee is largely dominated by the southern region and is projected to reach over $253.8 million by 2025, growing at a Compound Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 21.04% from 2017 to 2025. 

HumbleBean aims to tap this growing market while competing with major global brands like Starbucks, Barista, Tim Hortons, and Indian brands like Blue Tokai, Third Wave Coffee Roasters, Araku etc. 

“We know about the competitive landscape but we also know that everyone who walks into our cafe either knows their coffee very well or is passionate to learn more about coffee. We are banking primarily on word of mouth over other marketing strategies,” Soomanna says.

HumbleBean plans to launch its concept store in Indiranagar, Bengaluru. It would also serve as the second location for the coffee academy and as the second manual brew bar. 

The startup also has plans to expand to other countries in the Asia-Pacific region. 

“The final goal remains the same: establish HumbleBean as an Indian global brand that is sustainable, grounded, and invested in the place of production,” Soomanna says.

(The copy was updated to correct a typo in the name of the co-founder)

source: http://www.yourstory.com / YourStory.com / Home> Startups / by Pooja Rajkumar / September 20th, 2022