She Is Building A Brand That Puts Cafe-Like Cuppas Within Reach Of Ordinary Indians

Everyone wants a great cup of coffee, but coffee preferences vary wildly. Country Bean is looking to standardise this with its range of flavoured instant coffees and other cafe drinks.

Not everyone is willing to shell out INR 300 for a cup of coffee at Starbucks or Blue Tokai, and to that point, not many regular Indians want to get involved with manual brewing when drinking a cuppa at home. That’s the thesis that Aditi Somani Satnaliwala and Aneesh Satnaliwala based their coffee brand Country Bean around.

Most companies find it tough to break into the fiercely competitive world of craft coffee as this space is primarily ruled by loyalty play. Simply put, once a customer finds a coffee flavour and a coffee shop that they like, they hold on to those instead of experimenting with too many brands or their quick coffee models. Despite these hurdles, the startup has already served more than 200,000 customers via its online store, developed 20+ SKUs and sold more than 7 Lakh products till date. It clocked a revenue of INR 8 Cr in FY21.

For the average coffee drinker with an untrained palate, coffee is merely a naturally bitter base made palatable with milk and sugar. But for a coffee entrepreneur, it is all about getting the roast right, making the beverage uniquely flavourful and preserving those complex flavours. The biggest differentiation are the flavours added to the Country Bean products that bring cafe-like coffees to homes. This is not always possible with espresso machines or moka pots for manual brewing.

The craft coffee startup was set up to create a café-like experience at home. The company sources instant coffee from Southern India, and adds flavouring to create unique blends. It also offers a milk frother and authentic filter coffee decoction along with its flagship products such as hazelnut and vanilla (instant) coffee and hot chocolate mix that contains 60% less sugar than the competition. It has also ventured into ground coffee with its private label Bold.

As craft coffee increasingly gets popular, Country Bean aims to become a household name by launching new products through constant innovation of blends, flavours and formats. Eventually, it wants to bring flavourful coffee to more consumers by expanding into brick-and-mortar locations, besides many more online platforms.