Profile Overview
Yadukula Chengappa’s journey begins on a coffee estate in Kodagu, but his work today moves beyond the bean to the fruit surrounding it. What started as a discomfort with seeing cascara treated as waste evolved into the founding of CaBu, a beverage brand built around coffee’s overlooked fruit. The story traces how estate life, curiosity, and careful experimentation reshaped his understanding of coffee's value, positioning cascara not as a discard but as a category in its own right.
When people think of coffee, the first word that comes to mind is usually bean. Coffee, after all, has been defined for centuries by what happens to that small seed, how it is roasted, brewed, cupped, scored, and sold. But the story of coffee begins before the bean. The most overlooked part of the plant, the fruit itself, has been quietly waiting to be heard.
For Yadu Chengappa, that question is not theoretical. It is personal, practical, and rooted in decades of lived experience on a coffee estate. While much of the coffee world continues to revolve around beans, Yadu is building something entirely different: a beverage made from cascara, the coffee fruit that is typically discarded, composted, or treated as agricultural waste.
“I definitely don’t see it as a waste product,” he says. “I see it as a new beverage category, completely its own.”
That reframing sits at the heart of CaBu, his cascara-based beverage brand. The name itself carries the philosophy: “Ca” from Cascara, which is a Spanish word, and hence “Bu” from the word Bueno for good. Good cascara.
But the journey to that idea did not begin with a startup pitch or a desire to launch a beverage company. It began with discomfort, with smell, neglect, and a question that refused to go away.
Growing Up With Coffee
For Yadu, coffee was never something to be discovered later in life. Growing up in Kodagu, coffee was simply part of the environment, part of everyday rhythm.
“Coffee was never a product for us,” he explains. “It was a way of life.”
That perspective matters because it shapes how he approaches cascara today. His entry into this space was not driven by trends or market gaps, but by the intersection of two worlds: his professional background in problem-solving and his roots in coffee cultivation. That intersection came into focus when he began questioning something he had seen for years but never fully accepted.
During harvest season, coffee cherries are pulped to extract the bean. What remains, the skin, pulp, and fruit, is cascara. In most estates, it is dumped, composted, or left to rot.
The name itself carries the philosophy: “Ca” from Cascara, which is a Spanish word, and hence “Bu” from the word Bueno for good. Good cascara.
- Yadu
The cascara that usually gets discarded.
“It’s smelly. It’s always treated as waste,” Yadu says. “Handling it itself becomes a task.”
Technically, cascara has always been used, sometimes composted, sometimes mixed in very small quantities into cattle feed. But that, Yadu points out, is downcycling, not value creation. No one was really asking what more could be done with it.
That question stayed with him, especially because cascara carries an immediate psychological barrier. The smell of fermenting coffee fruit is strong, often unpleasant. Even when Yadu first tasted cascara, the sensory memory of that smell made it difficult.
“Psychologically, your stomach starts rumbling,” he recalls. “You first have to cross that barrier. Only then do you start appreciating what you’re actually drinking.”
Curiosity eventually replaced discomfort.
Through research and experimentation, Yadu realised that cascara had been consumed for centuries, just not here. In parts of Ethiopia and the Middle East, cascara-based drinks such as Qishr or Hashara are culturally embedded and traditionally brewed and spiced. Somehow, that deep-rooted lineage never took cultural shape in India, even though India is one of the world’s major coffee producers. That gap, between history and neglect, became impossible to ignore. What struck Yadu most was not that cascara was unused, but that it was misunderstood.
“We roast and drink the seed, and throw away the fruit,” Yadu says. “That contradiction always fascinated me.”
Cascara, despite being part of the same plant, remained largely invisible. Even the legendary origin story of coffee points to the fruit, not the bean. “The goats didn’t eat the bean; they ate the fruit. That part of the story is always forgotten." remarks Yadu.
CaBu's merch, bringing back the original story.
Botanically, coffee is a berry. Yet humans reversed the natural order, discarding the fruit and obsessing over the seed. Monkeys and birds instinctively eat the coffee cherry, but people trained themselves not to. Part of the problem, he believes, lies in language. Cascara is often called 'coffee husk' or 'coffee skin,' terms that immediately diminish its value.
“When you call it husk, people don’t respect it,” he says. “This is coffee fruit.”
Changing that perception, however, is not about hype. It is about education, and about acknowledging the work required to turn something labelled as waste into something worth consuming.
Coming Together of Two Different Worlds
If perception is the first challenge, processing is the second and far more complex. Coffee beans are dry, stable, well-studied, and protected by parchment during processing. Cascara, on the other hand, is fresh, perishable, and extremely time-sensitive. Post-harvest handling becomes critical. The biggest challenge is processing, as the window is very small; if it is missed, the quality is lost. Cascara is highly vulnerable to mould and fungus. Once things go wrong, there is no way to separate defects later. Yadu prefers cascara from dry-pulped, ripe cherries, where mucilage remains on the fruit. This adds depth to flavour but also increases processing complexity. Drying typically takes 10–12 days and requires the same level of attention as speciality coffee, sometimes more. Scaling this process is one of CaBu’s biggest challenges. At small volumes, control is possible. At scale, drying consistency, hygiene, and time sensitivity become major constraints.
“I didn’t enter this space because I wanted to start a beverage brand,” he says. “I just kept thinking, what else could be done with this?”
- Yadu
CaBu: A Modern Expression of an Old Ingredient
CaBu comes in 2 refreshing flavours.
CaBu’s product journey reflects this careful, iterative mindset.
The brand first launched as a still cascara beverage and received encouraging feedback. But something felt incomplete. The packaging, the pricing, the perception - they weren’t fully aligned. A premium drink in a PET bottle didn’t quite communicate what it was meant to be. More importantly, still formats invited comparison. When a drink looks like fruit juice, the brain starts analysing - sweetness, familiarity, expectation. Cascara wasn’t meant to be dissected that way.
Carbonation wasn’t added as a gimmick. It was a sensory decision. Fizz changes the experience. With still formats, the brain analyses. With fizz, the body responds. The refreshment becomes immediate. It enabled a shift to aluminium cans, elevated the positioning, and quietly challenged the assumption that carbonation belongs only to sugary soda.
“People think carbonation is bad only because they associate it with sugary colas,” he says. “Carbonation as such is not bad.”
Today, CaBu offers zero-sugar and low-sugar sparkling beverages, with multiple flavour options. The product is market-ready, but growth is intentionally slow. Coffee owns the ritual. CaBu owns the refreshment moment…CaBu fits into the in-between moments - when you want something refreshing and uplifting, but not another heavy caffeine hit. We’re not competing with coffee. We’re complementing it.
CaBu’s go-to-market strategy focuses on cafés, events, and selective retail, supported by direct-to-consumer sales. Awareness and education take precedence over rapid scaling. “We want organic growth,” Yadu explains. “Not viral growth where it spikes and crashes.”
CaBu is not positioning itself as a health brand, despite cascara’s antioxidants, potassium, and low caffeine. Refreshment comes first, with wellness as a benefit rather than the pitch. What excites him most are the moments of discovery, when consumers realise coffee is a fruit, and that the drink in their hand is bright, light, and not bitter.
“That ‘aha’ moment, we love that,” he says.
We’re not competing with coffee. We’re complementing it.
- Yadu
CaBu at the IICF Showcase 2026
Closing the Loop
CaBu sources cascara selectively, working primarily with their own estate and speciality coffee growers who already follow rigorous processes. Wider sourcing, Yadu believes, must come with education, because cascara cannot be treated casually. Cascara has appeared before in India in small, experimental formats. But no one has built it into a sustained, scaled beverage category yet. Long-term, he sees cascara playing a role across formats, including ready-to-drink beverages, café offerings, syrups, mocktails, and cocktails.
Summing up the experience, Yadu says, “We didn’t invent anything complex, we just chose to value what was already there.”
Today, a few specialty cafés are beginning to brew cascara again - a sign that curiosity is returning and the ingredient is gaining quiet momentum. In a coffee world that has spent centuries listening to the bean, Yadu Chengappa is asking a quieter but more radical question: what happens if we finally listen to the fruit? And in doing so, perhaps coffee’s future begins not with reinvention, but with attention.
