Project Kaapi: Coffee Beans, Canned with a Story

Where the Idea First Took Shape

Project Kaapi doesn’t come from a single idea. It comes from two very different ways of living with coffee in everyday life.

For Niddhi, coffee was always familiar, but she had never explored it beyond the everyday. As an interior designer, her world was centred around spaces and design.

For Prudhvi, coffee had always carried more memories. He grew up in a South Indian household shaped by a signature filter coffee culture, where coffee was woven into the rhythm of home. As a child, he was allowed coffee only once a week, and that small restriction made it feel special. It was not just a drink; it was a ritual, an anticipation, and something to be looked forward to.

Even before Project Kaapi existed, he had imagined building something around that feeling, not a conventional café, but an experiential coffee space where people could taste different coffees, understand what suited their palate, and buy with more intention. Somewhere between a coffee store and a tasting room, it would be a place where coffee felt less transactional and more personal.

That sense of anticipation stayed with him.

At the time, however, building something like that was difficult. Like many good ideas, it stayed unfinished, waiting for the right moment.

And in Coorg, that idea began to take shape.

What began as a visit to coffee estates soon became something far more personal. Farm walks, estate tours, and tasting workshops gave Prudhvi and Niddhi their first real understanding of coffee at origin, not as a finished product in a cup, but as something shaped by months of labour long before it reached the consumer.

What stayed with them most, however, was not just the coffee itself, but the people behind it.

They met farmers who spoke about their crops with extraordinary care, not as a product, but as years of labour, changing weather, patience, and family history. Many were producing exceptional coffees in small lots, with a level of attention most consumers would never see. Yet once the coffee left the farm, that connection often ended. It was exported, traded, and consumed somewhere else, with little visibility for the grower who had spent years shaping it.

That disconnect stayed with them.

One question, especially, stayed with Niddhi :

“If it’s grown here, we should know about it. Why doesn’t India know about it?”

At first, they believed the answer was simple: source better coffee and bring it closer to home. They wanted to introduce coffees from Coorg and Chikmagalur to people in Hyderabad, while increasing visibility for smaller farmers whose work deserved recognition. But the deeper they went, the clearer it became that sourcing alone was not enough.

Roasting changed everything.

Sourcing allowed them to choose good coffee. Roasting allowed them to shape how it would finally be experienced, the flavour, the profile, and the final cup. More importantly, it gave them a way to preserve what made each bean distinct, instead of letting it disappear under a generic dark roast.

That realisation pushed them towards formal learning through the Coffee Board of India, where they studied roasting, cupping, and coffee evaluation, not simply to sell coffee, but to understand it properly.

Somewhere in that process, the original idea changed.

Project Kaapi stopped being about bringing coffee from farms to customers. It became about making sure the people behind that coffee were not forgotten once it left the farm.

Building Visibility and Sustainability Across the Chain

From the beginning, Prudhvi and Niddhi were clear about one thing: Project Kaapi was not meant to revolve around the largest, most established estates. Instead, their attention kept shifting toward smaller producers working with limited lots. So, they began with something simple: conversation.

They spoke about the farms, the growers, and the origins behind each coffee. Not just flavour notes or tasting profiles, but the people and places that shaped the cup. They wanted every bag, every roast, and every product to carry an identity.

What followed was unexpected.

Farmers began reaching out to them directly. They wanted to be featured. They wanted customers to know where their coffee came from, who grew it, and what made it special. It became clear that recognition mattered as much as revenue.

That response sharpened Project Kaapi’s larger purpose. Beyond selling coffee, they were trying to answer a much bigger question: how do you put small Indian farmers on the global map?

That same philosophy shaped something as simple and as visible as their packaging.

For most customers, the aluminium can appears to be a branding decision. For them, it was a sustainability decision first. From the start, they were intentional about ensuring the brand’s sustainability extended to its packaging. They explored alternatives, including glass, but practicality shaped the outcome. Aluminium preserved freshness better, travelled more reliably, and could be recycled endlessly without degradation.

The reusable cork lid followed the same thinking: minimal, functional, and designed for reuse rather than disposal.

Still, the choice didn’t come without resistance.

They spent months prototyping before launch, even as people around them questioned the focus on packaging.

As Prudhvi recalls, “A lot of people said we were wasting time on this. But we were very clear, we wanted to get it right from day one, not fix it later.”

Coffee in a Shared Space

Project Kaapi went live in October 2024, first through offline stalls across Hyderabad, before the website launched in January. The growth, so far, has been entirely organic.

That organic growth led them into a very different setting, a campus ecosystem in Hyderabad. Through the IIIT start-up space and Mr Ramesh, a coffee enthusiast who believed their coffee belonged there, they were invited to create a small manual-brew bar.

Surrounded by students, start-up teams, bakers, and people constantly moving through a collaborative environment, the space became an easy entry point into specialty coffee. Small-lot coffees were tasted there, questions were asked, and first experiences with manual brewing happened there without the formality or intimidation of a conventional café.

It showed them something important: meaningful coffee culture does not always need a large standalone café. Sometimes, all it needs is a smaller shared space where curiosity feels welcome.

On Brewing, Flavour, and Balance

As the brand grew, they noticed two very different kinds of coffee drinkers.

Café drinkers usually wanted familiarity, something quick, reliable, and often sweeter. Home brewers wanted answers. They wanted to know where the coffee came from, why it tasted fruity, whether it would work better in a V60 or an AeroPress, and what changed when they adjusted grind size or brewing time.

They were often younger, newer to specialty coffee, and far more curious. For them, brewing became something slower and more intentional.

As Prudhvi describes it, “It’s a meditative thing for a lot of people.”

Project Kaapi never wanted coffee to feel like a rulebook, which is why they resisted rigid brewing instructions. If customers asked for recipes, they shared them, but they were equally interested in what people discovered for themselves.

As Niddhi says, “I personally don’t like to give instructions unless I’m asked for it because I want the customer to just play with their coffee.”

Someone returning to say that a recipe did not work was not a problem; it was the beginning of a better conversation.

Coffee, to them, should feel less like expertise and more like permission: to experiment, to get it wrong, and to discover your own taste.

That same thinking shapes their roast profiles. Most of their coffees sit in the medium-to-light range because that is where they believe flavour remains clear. Darker roasts can often overpower the distinct characteristics of the bean. They prefer letting acidity, citrus, berry notes, and texture remain visible.

Tipsy Tuskers works especially well as espresso, while Kent, a microlot, is their lightest roast and the one they speak about with particular care. It carries bright citrus and berry notes, and its focus is on preserving those flavours rather than overpowering them.

The same philosophy extends to mixology. They are not against experimentation, but they prefer to stay on what they call the cleaner side of coffee. Too much syrup or too much flavouring can make the coffee itself disappear.

Even their cold brews follow that approach. If they make something like a cinnamon cold brew, it comes from an in-house reduction rather than bottled syrup. Even their raw mango cold brew surprised people who insisted they were not coffee drinkers at all. Sometimes, they realised, people do not dislike coffee; they simply have not yet found the kind of coffee they enjoy.

Every label they create follows the same principle. Nothing is named first; it is storied first.

Tipsy Tuskers, for instance, came from a farmer talking about an elephant that regularly walked through the estate. Combined with the winey notes of the coffee’s processing, the image stayed. The story came first. The label came later.

Every illustration, every name, and every design decision is tied back to origin, not because storytelling is good marketing, but because it keeps the farm present in the final experience.

The Road Ahead

The long-term idea remains close to where it began: a shared space where different roasters can come together, where people can taste coffee before buying, and where the experience feels more open and exploratory. That early vision of a discovery-led coffee space has evolved, but not changed direction.

Alongside this, they are looking at smaller setups inside institutions and campuses, similar to the Hyderabad model, where engagement happens in a more natural, everyday way without the need for a large café. Expansion beyond Hyderabad is also part of the plan, with cities such as Bangalore and Mumbai under consideration.

But the ambition is not really about geography.

It returns instead to a set of questions they continue to work through: can they build something sustainable without drifting away from the people who made it possible? Can recognition travel back to its origin? Can small Indian farmers be placed on the map in a lasting way?

That remains the work.

Because Project Kaapi was never just about coffee.It was about making sure the people behind it are not forgotten.