Before Starbucks And Blue Tokai, There Was Araku: India’s First Real Farm-To-Cup Coffee

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It's official: Araku Coffee, grown by Adivasi farmers in Andhra Pradesh, is headed to British supermarkets under the India-UK Free Trade Agreement. Alongside Darjeeling tea and Kashmiri saffron, Araku stands tall-representing not just India's rich soil, but its ability to blend tradition, quality, and innovation.

And if you've never heard of Araku before this, now's a good time to catch up. Because before Blue Tokai served your weekend pour-over and before Starbucks introduced its monsoon malabar blends, Araku had already cracked the code: real farm-to-cup coffee with global standards and local roots.

Let's take a look at how this unassuming coffee from the Eastern Ghats brewed its way into history.

The Valley That Rewrote The Coffee Script

Back in the early 2000s, Araku Valley was better known for malnutrition and deforestation than artisanal coffee. The land was rich, the weather ideal, but the tribal communities had little support or direction. That changed when the Naandi Foundation stepped in.

Rather than bring in corporate farming or top-down charity, they worked with farmers to reclaim land, rejuvenate the soil, and restore dignity through coffee. This wasn't about starting a brand. It was about changing the way agriculture worked from the ground up.

More Than A Brand: A Cooperative With A Conscience

By 2007, what began as an initiative had become a full-fledged farmer-led cooperative. Thousands of Adivasi farmers, many of them women, were no longer labourers but owners of their coffee ecosystem.

Today, over 14,000 farmers across 700 villages grow Araku's beans on tiny plots, guided by regenerative agriculture and supported by biodynamic farming experts. There's no middleman, no hidden markup. The profits flow straight to the source.

This is not just traceability. It's accountability, with flavour.

What Makes Araku Truly Different?

While organic coffee is now a buzzword, Araku was doing it before it was trendy.

• 100% Organic & Biodynamic: No chemicals, pesticides or machinery
• Micro-lots: Most farms are under 1 hectare
• Shade-grown Arabica: Grown in the cool, misty Eastern Ghats at 1,000-1,300 m
• Terroir-mapped: Each bean can be traced back to its specific slope and farmer

Their model, dubbed Arakunomics, was globally recognised when it won the Food System Vision 2050 Prize from the Rockefeller Foundation-not just for coffee, but for showing how sustainability, equity and economics can co-exist.

Paris Said Yes Before India Did

It's not often that a tribal-led Indian brand opens its first café in Paris. But that's exactly what Araku did in 2017, setting up shop in Le Marais-the heart of high culture and caffeine snobs.

From the design to the menu, it was unapologetically Indian-but with the polish of a global premium label. Coffee lovers across France took note. Many were shocked to discover that Indian beans could score above 90 points on specialty coffee rating scales, right up there with Ethiopia and Colombia.

Only later, in 2021, did Araku open its first Indian café-in Bengaluru, followed by Mumbai. And now, thanks to the India-UK FTA, it's taking another leap, this time into British supermarkets.

Arakku vs Starbucks And Blue Tokai

If you're wondering how Araku stacks up against the brands you're more familiar with, here's the lowdown:

• Araku's roots go back to 1999-2000, though its first café opened in 2017.
• It's owned and run by a cooperative of tribal farmers-no corporate boards, no big middlemen.
• The supply chain is fully direct-from seed to shelf, every step is in their hands.
• Farming is regenerative, organic, and entirely hand-tended.
• And while Blue Tokai and Starbucks have made their name with franchises and marketing, Araku has taken a quieter route-already making its mark in Paris and now heading to the UK.

Simply put, Araku is not trying to be Blue Tokai or Starbucks. It's playing a deeper, slower game, one rooted in impact, transparency and unmatched quality.

From Araku To The UK

Thanks to the India-UK Free Trade Agreement, Araku Coffee now joins an elite list of Indian exports: Darjeeling tea, Kashmiri saffron, turmeric from the south, and makhana from Bihar. But unlike most of them, Araku isn't a historic GI-tagged product-it's a modern success story built on tribal revival and innovation.

It also reminds us of what #VocalForLocal can truly mean-when it's not a slogan, but a structure. A way of doing business where the farmer is not forgotten at the end of the chain, but placed at its very beginning.

One Cup, A Thousand Stories

The next time you sip Araku, you're tasting iron-rich red soil, cool mountain air, and the collective wisdom of thousands of farmers who rewrote their future with a crop that almost gave up on them.

Photo Credit: https://www.instagram.com/naandi_india

It's coffee-but also something more. A quiet win for the kind of India that rarely makes headlines. The one that nurtures, experiments, and now, exports.

And while Blue Tokai might have taught us how to order a pour-over, Araku taught us what it means to truly earn it.