Profile Overview
Bopanna Ramesh Theethamada and Ittira Lalappa Vishnu are the co-founders of Baa Brew, a canned coffee beverage brand built around a question that challenged the way they thought about caffeine, convenience, and coffee itself. Coming from coffee-growing families, the duo set out to explore whether coffee could become a natural alternative to conventional energy drinks while remaining true to the qualities that have made it one of the world's most widely consumed beverages.
Why can't coffee be an energy Drink?
Coffee has powered long drives, late-night study sessions, demanding workdays, and early morning starts for as long as most people can remember. Yet when people talk about products built around energy, performance, and focus, coffee is rarely the first thing that comes to mind.
That contradiction stayed with Bopanna and Vishnu. The more they looked at the category, the stranger it seemed. Coffee was already doing much of what energy drinks promised, yet the category belonged almost entirely to energy drinks.
"The promise is whatever coffee promises," they say. "But energy drinks are marketed insanely well."
Having grown up around coffee, Bopanna and Vishnu kept returning to the same question: if coffee was already one of the world's most widely consumed sources of caffeine, why wasn't it part of the energy drink conversation?
It also raised another question: why couldn't coffee become a healthier alternative to energy drinks? What if it could move beyond its traditional formats and enter the occasions when people typically reach for an energy drink?
Having spent years around coffee, they felt uniquely positioned to explore those questions. Baa Brew was built in search of those answers.
Vishnu at the Baa Brew booth, walking people through the brand.
Bopanna, one more conversation, one more person introduced to Baa Brew.
From Coffee Estates to Consumer Shelves
For both Bopanna and Vishnu, coffee was never something they discovered. It had always been a part of their lives. Coming from coffee-growing families, they spent years working on estates, cultivating, sourcing, and grappling with the realities of producing coffee. They understood coffee as an agricultural product long before they thought about it as a consumer brand.
"We always create coffee and sell it. But we do not add much to the value process of it," they explain.
That realisation gradually shaped the direction they wanted to pursue. While coffee producers spend years growing and selling exceptional coffee, relatively few have the opportunity to engage directly with the people who eventually consume it. Bopanna and Vishnu wanted to move closer to the end of the journey and build something that would allow them to interact more directly with consumers.
Their backgrounds continue to influence the product today. Drawing on years of experience in sourcing and procurement, the company works with coffees from producing regions across Africa and South America, including Kenya, Tanzania, and Nicaragua. Production takes place in Coorg, where the founders value the quality of the local water and its contribution to the final flavour profile.
The idea for Baa Brew may have started with a question about energy drinks, but it was rooted in years spent understanding coffee from the ground up.
What remained was figuring out how coffee could fit into a category long dominated by something else.
How do energy drinks have this functional beverage category all to themselves when coffee actually should be partaking in the same thing?
- Bopanna and Vishnu
Building a Bridge Between Ritual and Function
The answer, the founders realised, had less to do with coffee itself and more to do with the occasions surrounding it.
Coffee already had a place in people's lives through familiar routines and rituals. What interested the founders was whether it could also find a place in occasions driven by convenience, portability, and energy.
Whether it was a long highway drive, a workout session, a daily commute, or a late-night study session, these were moments when people often reached for energy drinks, not because coffee could not serve the same purpose, but because the format fit the occasion more naturally.
"How do energy drinks have this functional beverage category all to themselves when coffee actually should be partaking in the same thing?" they ask.
That line of thinking eventually inspired a move into canned coffee. A format that could travel, one that could sit in a car during a long drive, wait inside a gym bag before a workout, or be picked up on the way out the door without requiring any preparation.
At the same time, the founders wanted to distance themselves from the experience often associated with conventional energy drinks.
"This is a savourable energy drink," they explain.
The phrase captures what they were trying to build from the beginning: something that delivered energy without abandoning the qualities that made people enjoy coffee in the first place.
The challenge then became turning that idea into a brand people could recognise.
A can of Baa Brew's Vanilla Coffee, built for the long drives and late nights it was made for
Baa Brew stepping into mixology.
The Story Behind the Name
As the product began taking shape, so did the story surrounding it. The name Baa Brew draws inspiration from Dravidian linguistic roots, where Baa is associated with welcoming and initiation, while also paying tribute to Baba Budan, who is credited with introducing coffee to India centuries ago.
The sheep mascot reaches even further back into coffee's history. Inspired by one of coffee's most enduring origin stories, it references the Ethiopian legend of animals becoming unusually energetic after consuming coffee cherries.
"The idea was always to have a mascot," they recall.
The founders wanted the brand to feel approachable and memorable while still remaining connected to coffee's deeper history. Over time, the sheep became one of Baa Brew's most recognisable elements, appearing across its packaging, which continues to evolve in response to customer feedback and experimentation.
That willingness to iterate has shaped much of the brand's early journey. Rather than settling on a single design direction, the team continues to refine its packaging in response to consumer feedback, seeking a visual identity that stands out while remaining true to the product's purpose.
The branding may have been inspired by coffee's history, but its success would ultimately depend on how modern consumers responded to it.
Building a New Category, One Canned coffee at a Time
Baa Brew launched commercially only a few months ago, and the founders are still learning how consumers engage with the product across different contexts.
Some customers reach for it during long drives, while others carry it to workouts or keep a can nearby during late-night study sessions. As the product has reached more hands, the founders have also seen consumers discover use cases they had not initially anticipated. Among them is mixology, where Baa Brew has been used as a base for cocktails and mocktails, pairing particularly well with white spirits such as gin and vodka.
Each new use case reinforces the same idea that first inspired the company: coffee can extend beyond its traditional formats without losing its identity.
The company remains bootstrapped, growing steadily while refining its products, packaging, and positioning in response to ongoing customer feedback.
Alongside its original cold brew offering, the company has also introduced Cava, a sugar-free spiced coffee variant that reflects its broader interest in creating functional coffee beverages for modern consumers.
There have already been encouraging signs along the way. The brand was showcased at World of Coffee Dubai, where it featured among the top new brands and designs. Support from the AIC incubation ecosystem helped the founders refine their pitch, secure support through Karnataka's Elevate programme, and gain exposure to international audiences through global trade events.
Bopanna and Vishnu at World of Coffee, Dubai.
Looking ahead, the company is exploring opportunities in North India, particularly the National Capital Region, where early responses at trade events and food exhibitions have been encouraging. At the same time, the founders are evaluating opportunities in Middle Eastern markets and navigating the compliance and regulatory requirements for entry.
As the company expands, the founders have also observed subtle differences in how consumers respond to the product across regions. They note that consumers in North India are often more willing to experiment with new products, while consumers in the South tend to be more inquisitive before making a purchase, partly because coffee traditions are already deeply embedded in everyday life.
Even so, they believe those differences are gradually narrowing as cold brew and ready-to-drink coffee become more familiar across India's major cities.
Yet despite the conversations about growth, distribution, and new markets, Bopanna and Vishnu often return to the same idea that started it all.
"We would just want it to be positioned as a functional drink."
For the founders, the ambition has never been to replace the rituals that people already associate with coffee. Those rituals have existed for generations and are unlikely to disappear.
What interests them is the space beyond those rituals. The moments spent driving through the night, heading to a workout, rushing between commitments, or looking for a little more energy to get through the day.
Coffee has always been present in those moments. Baa Brew is simply an attempt to package it differently. In many ways, the company is built around a simple belief: if coffee has always been an energy source, perhaps it deserves a place in the energy conversation too.
