At a 55-acre ancestral plantation in Coorg, fourth-generation planter Rishwin Devaya is building more than a coffee brand. By bringing together specialty coffee, farm-to-cup experiences and direct-to-consumer entrepreneurship, he hopes to change how India’s coffee growers think about the business of farming.

Rishwin Devaya, fourth-generation planter and owner of Riverside Estate in Coorg, is taking his family’s coffee legacy into a new era through specialty coffee and farm-to-cup experiences.

The first thing one notices at Riverside Estate is the quiet rhythm of a working plantation. Coffee plants stretch across undulating hills, their branches shaded by taller trees, while pepper vines climb their trunks. Somewhere in the distance, workers move between the rows, clearing the ground and preparing for the harvest. The air carries the damp, earthy scent of Coorg, and the occasional rustle of leaves is interrupted by the sound of a bird or the movement of a vehicle along the estate’s winding path.

It is an idyllic setting, but Riverside Estate is not simply a retreat tucked into the coffee-growing landscape of Karnataka. It is a working plantation with a history stretching back more than a century, and increasingly, a laboratory for a different way of doing business with coffee

Spread across 55 acres, the estate traces its origins to 1898, when Rishwin Devaya’s great-great-grandfather established the family property. Coffee cultivation followed in 1932, and the plantation has since passed through generations of the family. Today, it is managed by Devaya, his father and his brother, with the land divided into eight blocks to make cultivation and operations easier to monitor.

For Devaya, however, the challenge is not merely preserving an inherited enterprise. It is making it economically sustainable for the next generation.

The moment the planter tasted his own coffee

Devaya’s return to Coorg was not an inevitable homecoming. After growing up between Coorg and Bengaluru, studying commerce in Hyderabad and working in sales and marketing, he found himself drawn to the business of building consumer brands. A stint with a wine company, which was working to promote Indian wines, proved particularly influential.

It raised a question that would eventually change his relationship with the family plantation: if the estate had been growing coffee for generations, why wasn’t it selling its own coffee?

The answer, as he discovered, was more complicated than he had anticipated.

When Devaya first began exploring the possibility of marketing the estate’s coffee around 2014-15, he realised that the family had been growing and selling coffee without really understanding the quality of what it produced. The beans were harvested, processed and sold largely as a commodity. There was little incentive to invest in painstaking sorting or specialised processing when the final price was dictated by the international commodity market.

The first time he properly tasted the estate’s own coffee, the experience was something of an awakening.

He began learning how to transform the coffee cherry into a finished beverage, a process that took several years of experimentation, research and training. He also discovered that improving coffee quality required intervention much earlier than the roasting stage.

In specialty coffee, the difference begins on the plantation floor.

The value of picking only the reds

During a walk through the estate, Devaya stops beside an Arabica plant. Its branches carry coffee cherries in varying stages of maturity: some green, some red and a few already overripe.

To an untrained eye, they may all look like coffee. But to a specialty coffee producer, the distinction is fundamental.

Much like mangoes on a tree, coffee cherries do not ripen simultaneously. Harvesting everything together is quicker and cheaper, but it compromises consistency. Picking only the ripe red cherries, on the other hand, requires workers to move through the plantation repeatedly, selecting each fruit individually and leaving the unripe ones behind.

It is labour-intensive, but the difference eventually finds its way into the cup.

Devaya uses this simple comparison to explain the distinction between commodity and specialty coffee. The former prioritises volume and consistency of supply; the latter places a premium on selection, quality and the character of the finished product.

The estate grows both Arabica and Robusta, alongside smaller quantities of lesser-known varieties such as Liberica and Excelsa. The Arabica blocks are maintained under a cooler microclimate with greater shade, while Robusta is grown in comparatively warmer conditions. Pepper, cardamom and rice are also part of the estate’s agricultural mix.

Coffee, Devaya explains, is remarkably sensitive to its environment. Soil composition, elevation, rainfall, shade, harvesting practices and processing techniques can all influence the final flavour. Even two coffees grown on neighbouring estates can taste noticeably different.

It is this complexity that has helped drive the growth of specialty coffee globally, and one that Indian producers are only beginning to fully explore.

India is a significant coffee-growing country, with Karnataka accounting for the bulk of domestic production. Yet much of the country’s coffee has historically been sold through commodity channels, with relatively little emphasis on building distinctive consumer-facing brands.

Devaya wants to change that, beginning with his own estate.

From commodity to craft

The transformation at Riverside is visible not just in the plantation but in its processing facilities.

Inside a controlled drying room, coffee beans are spread across raised beds, with fans circulating air to regulate moisture and ensure uniform drying. Unlike traditional open-air drying, where exposure to rain, dust and inconsistent sunlight can affect the beans, the controlled environment allows the estate to manage the process more precisely.

The coffee is also graded according to ripeness and quality. Carefully selected red cherries are separated from lower-grade produce, ensuring that the better beans can command a premium rather than being diluted by an undifferentiated bulk harvest.

Then there is fermentation, an increasingly important part of specialty coffee production.

At Riverside, Devaya experiments with different fermentation methods, using naturally occurring yeasts and bacteria in the coffee fruit to influence flavour development. Some batches are fermented as whole cherries, while others undergo processing after the fruit has been pulped. Each technique produces a different flavour profile.

It is a process that requires both technical understanding and patience. Temperature, acidity, sugar content and fermentation activity all need to be monitored. A decision made during processing can significantly alter the final cup.

And unlike many manufacturing businesses, coffee offers only one opportunity each year to test certain agricultural decisions. If a process does not deliver the desired result, the next opportunity to improve it may be an entire harvest cycle away

For Devaya, this annual learning curve is part of the appeal.

The commercial logic, however, is equally compelling.

When he started selling Riverside Coffee in 2016, the operation handled approximately 100 kilograms annually. Today, the business sells around 10 tonnes a year. Its range has also expanded from five coffees to 13, catering to different preferences in roast, strength and brewing styles.

The estate currently processes and markets only a portion of its total harvest directly, but Devaya hopes to increase that share substantially over the coming years.

He estimates that value addition can generate a 35-40 per cent improvement in realisation compared with selling unprocessed coffee, although it also requires investments in machinery, processing infrastructure, packaging and marketing.

The Coffee Board of India helped him take the first step, extending a 40 per cent subsidy towards the establishment of his roasting unit

For a farmer operating within a global commodity market, the ability to control even part of the journey from cultivation to consumption represents a significant shift.

The business of owning the value chain

Perhaps the most revealing part of Devaya’s story is not his ambition to produce better coffee, but his determination to change the economics of growing it.

For generations, coffee planters have been exposed to price fluctuations determined by international supply and demand. A frost in Brazil, a change in production in Vietnam or geopolitical disruption elsewhere can influence the price received by a farmer in Coorg, regardless of the effort invested in that particular harvest

Devaya remembers growing up listening to his father discuss commodity prices and the uncertainty they created for the family.

Even major personal decisions, he recalls, could depend on whether coffee prices were favourable that year.

“I don’t think that’s how the world should work,” is how he reflects on that experience.

His response has been to build a business in which the producer has a greater say in the final price.

By roasting, packaging and selling coffee under the Riverside Coffee brand, he can capture a larger share of the value created along the supply chain. Instead of depending entirely on commodity buyers, the estate can build relationships with cafés, wholesale customers and individual consumers.

The distinction is important. A farmer selling raw coffee is largely a price-taker. A farmer selling a differentiated product with an established customer base has a greater opportunity to determine its value.

Devaya believes this is where the future of Indian coffee farming lies.

He is particularly encouraged by the growing interest in coffee across India, including in markets that have traditionally favoured tea. The expansion of cafés and specialty coffee outlets has introduced more consumers to different varieties, origins and brewing methods. The next opportunity, he believes, is to translate that curiosity into home consumption.

His larger concern is that if farmers do not take charge of this emerging market, the economic benefits of India’s growing coffee culture may accrue largely to brands and intermediaries rather than the people cultivating the crop.

It is an argument that extends beyond coffee. For agricultural producers, value addition is not simply about creating a premium product; it is about reducing dependence on volatile commodity prices and building a more predictable source of income.

A plantation that opens its doors

The other part of the Riverside story emerged almost by accident.

When Devaya returned to Coorg in 2016, his initial focus was on marketing coffee. But the estate also presented another opportunity: hospitality.

Friends and acquaintances would frequently ask if they could visit and stay at the family property. Rather than simply accommodate them in the ancestral house, Devaya began considering a more structured hospitality offering.

Construction of the cottages began in 2017, and by October 2019, Riverside had four individual cottages designed to offer guests a more private experience of plantation life.

The timing proved unexpectedly significant. When the pandemic arrived, the independent cottages offered something many travellers were looking for: privacy, space and the opportunity to escape crowded urban environments without having to navigate shared hotel spaces.

Word of mouth helped the property grow, and the hospitality business became an important part of the estate’s overall enterprise.

Yet the cottages also served another purpose. Guests who came for the landscape and the tranquillity began discovering the coffee. Devaya would roast small batches and offer them to visitors, many of whom wanted to take some home.

The connection between hospitality and coffee became increasingly apparent. A stay could introduce someone to the plantation, while the coffee could sustain the relationship long after the guest had returned home.

This is also what makes a visit to Riverside more interesting than a conventional plantation stay.

A walk through the estate offers a close-up understanding of how coffee is cultivated, harvested and processed. Visitors can see the difference between Arabica and Robusta, observe the seasonal rhythms of the crop and follow the transformation of a coffee cherry into the beans eventually roasted and brewed.

Devaya is now considering formalising these walks into curated farm experiences, potentially combining plantation tours, processing demonstrations and meals prepared using produce from the estate.

The food itself is an extension of the farm-to-table philosophy. Rice, pepper and other ingredients grown on the property find their way into the kitchen, alongside regional Coorg preparations.

It is a more complete expression of what the estate produces: not just a place to stay amid coffee plants, but an opportunity to understand the agricultural ecosystem that sustains it.

Making rural enterprise aspirational again

For all its commercial ambitions, Riverside remains a deeply personal project for Devaya.

He remembers spending his childhood summers on the estate, climbing trees, swimming in the river and spending time with the workers and farm animals. It was a way of life that he wants his own son to experience, but he is also conscious that nostalgia alone cannot sustain a plantation.

“It is a very hard life,” he acknowledges.

The romantic idea of returning to a family farm often overlooks the financial realities of agricultural entrepreneurship. Rising labour costs, climatic uncertainty, disease, fluctuating commodity prices and the considerable investment required to maintain a plantation can make farming an increasingly difficult proposition.

Devaya has experienced some of those pressures himself. The hospitality expansion involved loans, and the pandemic brought its own financial anxieties. There have been moments when he has considered abandoning the business and returning to a corporate job in Bengaluru.

What has kept him going, he says, is the response of customers who genuinely connect with the coffee and the experience.

He recalls a customer who first tried Riverside Coffee in 2018 and has continued ordering it every few months, despite never having met him in person. There are also repeat guests who return to the estate several times a year.

These relationships, he believes, are the foundation of a more resilient business

His vision is to increase direct-to-consumer sales from the current level of around 20 per cent of the estate’s coffee production to as much as 80 per cent. He also hopes to extend the model to other produce grown on the property, including pepper and rice.

Beyond Riverside, there is a larger ambition.

Devaya wants Coorg to develop into something resembling California’s Napa Valley, where visitors travel not simply to see a vineyard or visit one winery, but to experience an entire region through its produce, producers and distinct agricultural identity.

In his imagined version, Coorg would become a destination for coffee enthusiasts, with different estates offering their own varieties, processing methods and tasting experiences.

For that to happen, more plantation owners would need to recognise the commercial potential of their produce and develop their own brands and visitor experiences.

It is also a way of making rural life aspirational again.

For decades, migration to cities has been driven by the perception that economic opportunity and a better quality of life exist elsewhere. Devaya wonders whether the next generation could be encouraged to move in the opposite direction, provided rural India can offer viable businesses, meaningful livelihoods and the opportunity to grow.

The question is not whether people love the countryside. It is whether they can afford to build a future there.

As the walk through Riverside comes to an end, the plantation is already preparing for its next harvest. The coffee cherries will be picked, sorted, fermented, dried, roasted and eventually dispatched to customers who may be hundreds or thousands of kilometres away.

For Devaya, every harvest is another opportunity to improve the product and strengthen the business behind it.

The ambition is no longer simply to preserve what his ancestors built in 1898. It is to ensure that the land continues to sustain the people who work it, and that the value of what grows here is recognised well beyond the boundaries of the estate.

In the end, the future of Riverside may be measured not only by the quality of its coffee or the number of guests who pass through its cottages, but by whether it can demonstrate that a family plantation in Coorg can be both a viable business and an enduring way of life

source: http://www.moneycontrol.com / Money Control / Home> Travel / by Rajni Pandey / November 02nd, 2026