Profile Overview
Manvi Gupta is the founder of El Bueno Coffee Roasters, a Delhi-based specialty roastery that began in 2018 as a trading operation and has since grown into one of North India’s recognised roasteries. Self-taught through burnt batches and Scott Rao’s masterclasses, she leads the roasting with a simple conviction: specialty coffee should not intimidate, it should invite. Ketan Kamra, who spent nine years in management consulting, recently joined to lead the business side. Together, their mission is straightforward: make specialty coffee simple, take it to every corner of India, and give Indian coffee the global stage it deserves.
The joke began with Starbucks.
Manvi Gupta was spending about ₹200 per cup at the time, which still felt like a significant expense. Ketan Kamra would often tease her, saying,
“At this rate, you might as well start your own coffee company.”
Over time, the joke stayed on and became something they kept returning to.
In 2017, they travelled to Singapore together for an enterprise programme at NUS. Ketan was in the final phase of his engineering degree, already placed. Manvi was in her second year of college. The plan was simple: go, explore, and enjoy the trip.
During the programme, they met a professor, who was also an angel investor in a Singapore-based coffee company called Hook Coffee. The conversation stayed with them, making the idea feel more tangible.
Back in Delhi after the programme, Manvi began to look into it more seriously. She read about coffee, the industry, and what it would actually take to start something of their own. By then, what had begun as a joke had turned into a real consideration.
In December 2018, El Bueno was registered.
The name came from a Spanish class they had taken together. When Manvi started thinking about what to call the brand, she kept coming back to something simple, something that just meant “good.” “Good Coffee Roasters” felt too direct, so she went with the Spanish version: El Bueno.
Trading Before Roasting
In the early days after registering El Bueno in 2018, the business didn’t start with roasting. Instead, from late 2018 through mid-2019, they worked as traders, buying roasted coffee from suppliers in Bangalore and Coorg and selling it in Delhi. Their first order was small, just 50 kilograms, but it was enough to begin.
At this stage, their work with planters and producers was still taking shape. Manvi was just 21 and still early in her journey in the coffee industry. Building familiarity and trust in those initial conversations naturally took time as they learned their way into the space.
So they continued trading. Over time, as volumes grew and their work became more consistent, conversations became easier. Gradually, relationships deepened, and they began working more closely with producers. Today, El Bueno works with partners that include women planters, something Manvi mentions with quiet satisfaction.
But trading came with a limitation they couldn’t ignore. They had no control over the final product. If a client wanted a different roast level, they couldn’t change it. If someone asked for a specific profile, they had no way to adjust it. Everything depended on whoever had roasted the coffee upstream.
“I could not fully satisfy the customer. I cannot go back and forth with roast profiles, roast levels, coffee varieties.”
That was the constraint they kept running into.
In 2019, they decided to change that. They got a Probat 12.
A 12-kilogram drum roaster. Her first.
Manvi began learning alongside the machine. She followed Scott Rao’s online masterclasses and completed his courses twice. The first time, she did not have a roaster. The second time, with the Probat in place, she began applying what she had learnt to actual roasts. She worked with roast curves, shared outputs, received feedback, and adjusted profiles.
Their first employee, Rohan, came from the Coffee Board of India. Ketan describes his presence as “a huge support” in getting the basics right. Even then, early batches were inconsistent because they were still gaining experience.
At one point, a client came in with a specific requirement: a Vienna roast style similar to Blue Tokai. They were willing to place the order if the profile matched. Manvi was clear about their stage in the learning process, but decided to take it on as a way to test and build her own capability.
The batch did not turn out as intended.
“They ground it,” she says, “and it was like burning ash.”
On a 12 kg roaster, the minimum green input is 5–6 kg, so the entire batch was lost.
Ketan notes that during that period, the cost of experimentation was relatively more manageable. Green specialty coffee was priced around ₹280–350 per kg. Certain experimental lots, such as whiskey fermentation, were around ₹500 per kg at the time, compared to much higher prices today. Margins were more forgiving, and the category was still developing.
Today, if someone is starting out, it is not going to be that easy to afford to lose some batches
- Ketan Kamra
Since then, prices have increased significantly. While rising prices are often viewed externally as higher profitability for planters, Manvi describes a more grounded reality.
“The costs for them have gone really, really high. Labour’s become expensive. Maintaining those estates has become so expensive.”
In her conversations with planters, she notes that these cost pressures influence everyday decisions. As commodity prices rise, some growers reassess whether the additional effort required for specialty processing remains viable.
Keep It Simple
Roasting presents its own set of learnings for Manvi. Experiments with profiles and roast levels showed Manvi how quickly coffee can become complex. Over time, she found that added complexity did not always improve clarity or accessibility.
At El Bueno, that learning has settled into a simple principle: keep coffee accessible.
We want coffee to be simple. Don’t complicate it so much that a newcomer is overwhelmed
- Manvi Gupta
She feels that specialty coffee, at times, has developed a language and process that can feel distant to those encountering it for the first time.
“They’re lowkey scared of entering,” she says.
At El Bueno’s cuppings, whether for clients or first-time visitors, the format is kept open. There is no emphasis on protocol.
“Just taste it. There’s no need to follow timing or temperatures. Just taste coffee.”
The discussion that follows is straightforward: whether the cup works, and whether it would be revisited.
This shows up most clearly at the cupping table. A fruit-fermented coffee, often positioned as a more experimental category in specialty coffee, is placed alongside a washed or natural coffee, blind. Participants are asked to choose. Most often, they prefer the more familiar profiles.
“It’s important not to just follow what others are saying. You need to see what suits your palate.”
Fermented coffees, she adds, are not superior or inferior, only different. What is discussed widely and what is preferred in practice do not always align.
Manvi and Ketan evaluating coffees to refine taste
When Coffee Didn't Matter Yet
If keeping coffee simple shaped how El Bueno approached customers, another constraint shaped how the business itself was built. Before roast levels or sourcing came into focus, there was a more basic question: whether coffee mattered at all.
When El Bueno started in 2018, the conversation was not about profiles or processing. It was about whether coffee deserved attention in the first place. For many cafés, it remained a secondary menu item. In hotels, it was often treated as part of breakfast service rather than a category on its own.
The pitch was not about choosing a better roaster. It was about upgrading coffee itself.
“You won’t even believe,” she says. “Most of our time was spent convincing them why they need to upgrade.”
The conversation was about legitimacy more than differentiation.
That conversation has shifted. Today, the focus is on profiling and sourcing, and how different coffees are being approached.
“That’s a much healthier conversation to have,” she emphasised.
India is like having four or five countries in one country. Every state has a different palette. There’s no single thing I can point to and say this sells, and this doesn’t. Everything sells. You just need to know what you want to sell.
- Manvi Gupta
This shapes how El Bueno extends its work beyond the roastery. The team runs cupping sessions and workshops at its experiential space, often alongside new launches to gather feedback on roast levels.
More recently, these sessions have been taken to partner cafés. The intent is to reach people who may not enter a roastery but are beginning to explore specialty coffee.
“Not only does it give you feedback,” Manvi says, “it helps you interact with more people, educate more people, and opens up the market as a whole.”
Her own preference sits in the medium range: yellow honeys, red honeys, clean coffees. In recent months, she has also worked more with dark roasts, which she describes as technically demanding.
“It’s very easy to make coffee taste smoky or ashy in a darker roast. Maintaining a caramelised finish is what people usually look for.”
Robusta features in her espresso blends. While often sidelined in specialty contexts, she is direct about its value.
“Just because there’s a price differential doesn’t mean the coffee is bad. Robusta is still beautiful. There are estates in Coorg doing really interesting processing with robustas.”
Ketan’s preferences differ. He drinks black coffee, usually pour-over, light to medium, in the mornings.
“If I’m having a pour-over, I can have another round in thirty minutes. With a milk-based cup, I can’t do that.”
What sells also varies by region. In Gujarat, particularly in Surat and Ahmedabad, customers are increasingly turning to pour-overs as an everyday drink. In northern India, preferences remain darker. In the south, slightly darker still.
Ketan links this change to broader structural shifts. Before joining El Bueno around 10 months ago, he spent 9 years in management consulting, most recently in strategy work for retail and consumer brands. From that experience, he describes India’s coffee market as still expanding.
Per capita consumption has been rising and is expected to continue doing so.
“We have not reached the takeaway stage,” he says, referring to grab-and-go coffee culture in Western markets. “But we have reached the indulgence phase.”
Spending on café experiences is increasing across tier-1, tier-2, and tier-3 cities. The next phase of growth, he believes, will come less from metros like Mumbai, Delhi, or Bangalore, and more from tier-2, tier-3, and tier-4 cities. Early demand patterns at El Bueno already reflect this shift.
“Whoever cracks this model first will be able to dominate in terms of volumes,” he mentions.
A parallel change is the rise of the home brewer. After repeated café visits, some consumers begin replicating coffee at home. Entry typically starts with tools like the V60 or French press, followed later by espresso setups.
In developed economies, everyone has a coffee machine at home. We will land there very soon.
- Ketan Kamra
For Manvi, engagement has increased alongside consumption. Customers now return with feedback on tasting notes, experiment with brewing methods, and compare extraction approaches. In some cases, she has adapted her own process based on their inputs.
“That’s the power of knowledge and practice at the same time,” she says.
Events such as the India International Coffee Festival in Bangalore reflect this change. She has found herself in extended conversations with home brewers she previously knew only through Instagram.
“The amount of depth and knowledge that people go into is amazing,” she says.
The festival has also become a meeting point for the ecosystem, bringing planters, roasters, and consumers into the same space.
As the ecosystem has expanded, so has El Bueno’s own team. El Bueno today has a team of around fifteen people. Most joined without prior experience in coffee or roasting. Some now work in sensory roles.
“We take great pride in that,” she adds.
For Manvi, the team remains central to how the business operates.
“You don’t spend as much time at your own house as you spend at your office. The people you work with are much more important.”
This has remained consistent as the company has grown.
For three consecutive years, El Bueno has participated in World of Coffee in Dubai. A few years ago, Indian coffee had a limited presence. Today, Indian specialty lots are actively being traded and explored.
“They are now willing to explore Indian coffees,” Manvi says.
El Bueno’s focus remains on B2B and wholesale, moving Indian coffee into international markets through structured distribution channels. The company has also established a small presence in Dubai.
Going forward
As the market around them has grown, the question of what comes next often comes up.
“Can I just be a coffee drinker for life and not do anything?” Manvi laughs.
A café is part of that future, but only once recipes are developed in-house and the menu is fully defined.
“I don’t want to follow what everyone else is doing right now,” she says.
For now, Ketan is focused on the homebrewer segment. It is smaller in volume than B2B hospitality but higher in value, and it attracts more engaged consumers for experimental lots, fermented coffees, and unusual varietals.
At a broader level, both see the Indian coffee ecosystem expanding across planters, roasters, consumers, and global markets.
“It’s going to be phenomenal,” Manvi concludes.
