It all began with a weekend experiment in January 2022. Karumbaiah, SoCoffee’s founder, had always been close to coffee, spending years around coffee estates in Coorg. One weekend, inspired by his roots and a spark to share quality coffee, he set up a simple Shopify site offering freshly roasted, ground coffee from a local shop in Gonikoppal. An email to his alumni group led to 50 orders.

The orders, however, also came with a flood of questions: “Is it a dark or light roast?” “Which estate is it from?” “Can I use it in a French press?” Despite his background, Karumbaiah realized he couldn’t answer these questions, and it hit him: even with his deep connection to coffee, there was still so much he didn’t know about what goes into the cup.

This led to a deep dive over the next 3 years, where he rolled up his sleeves to learn about growing, processing, roasting, brewing, and cupping. And the more he learned, the clearer it became: the gap between farm and cup was real. Small growers often never tasted their own coffee, and consumers had little idea of the journey behind theirs. This realization became the core of SoCoffee’s mission: to bridge the gap to bridge the gap between farm and cup, but to do it in a manner that is technology driven and hence scalable.

As Karumbaiah says, “My journey started as an accidental experiment, sparked by questions I couldn’t answer. That experience pushed me to dig deeper—and inspired me to make that learning accessible to others.” This led to SoCoffee’s approach of being primarily rooted in content, where the first step is to spotlight and celebrate all the good work happening across India’s coffee ecosystem. Once we’ve inspired curiosity in people, our aim is to transform it into an experience—where enjoying coffee goes hand-in-hand with knowing its story and supporting its roots.