Profile Overview
Shravan D.S., founder of Beanrove, grew up on his family’s coffee estate in Chikkamagaluru and shaped his career through both hands-on craft and lessons from early missteps. From representing India in a student competition in Italy to starting over in a Toronto café, each step refined his skills and understanding of the coffee trade. Today, Beanrove works with estates and cafés across India, creating roasts that reflect Shravan’s belief in learning, adapting, and building quality through experience.
As a boy growing up in Chikkamagaluru, Shravan often heard the familiar lesson every Indian child was taught: “Money doesn’t grow on trees.” He laughs when he recalls it because, in his world, it did.
Just outside his doorstep at the Kalledevarapura estate, bright red coffee cherries clung to lush green branches. Each harvest could carry his family’s work halfway across the world. But for young Shravan, coffee wasn’t yet about beans or blends. It was about people.
The estate was his first classroom, and his parents’ living room, his first networking hub. Buyers and roasters from around the world passed through, each carrying stories of their lands, their challenges, and their love for coffee. Those conversations, casual as they seemed at the time, were already laying the foundation for his future.
In the mid-1990s, India had just liberalised its coffee trade. In 1995, his father, D.M. Shankar, along with his younger brother Purnesh, launched Classic Coffee and Spices with a clear ambition: to take Indian coffee to the world. Their first export, however, rejected their coffee.
It could have been the end of the dream. Instead, his father and Mr.Purnesh simply asked, “Alright, then. How do we make it better?” They refined harvesting, processing and hulling, until the flavour matched international standards. That stubborn optimism, acknowledging failure but refusing to be defeated, stayed with Shravan for life.
Dr. Ernesto Illy, visiting the estate in the late ’90s, welcomed by his mom, with his uncle on the right and Mr. Purnesh, his dad’s younger brother.
First Lessons in a Larger World
Coffee soon pulled Shravan far beyond his family’s estate.
“This is a product that needs to be sold to the world,” he realised.
But he didn’t yet understand how international markets worked. That curiosity led him to Scotland in 2004, where he pursued a Master’s in International Marketing at Strathclyde Business School.
In 2006, he returned to India to join the family business. Two years into this journey, in 2008, Sunalini Menon, one of India’s most respected coffee experts, invited him to represent the country at Illy’s 75th-anniversary student competition in Italy.
His prep time? Three days. The performance theme was Atithi Devo Bhava, “The guest is God.” They would serve cappuccinos alongside Monaco biscuits with cheese. But competition day had other plans.
Dressed in a sherwani, balancing his tray, he caught his foot on a Wi-Fi cable. Cups, biscuits, cheese, everything went flying.
“My hands were shaking,” he says.
But he steadied himself and went on to win first place against 25 coffee-producing nations. More than the medal, though, it was the people in that room — deeply knowledgeable, utterly dedicated to coffee who left an impression.
“I knew then,” he says, “I wanted to be part of that world.”
Falling and Finding His Feet
Motivated by that experience, Shravan returned to India with a determination to deepen his craft. In 2011, along with his family, he opened a café in Malleshwaram. It failed, teaching him that growing coffee and running a café were entirely different skills.
“Nothing will teach you like mistakes,” he reflects. “The idea is to learn from it, dust off, and pick yourself up,” he reflects.
That failure prompted Shravan to reflect deeply. He realized he had grown complacent and wasn’t sure how to contribute meaningfully. Wanting to gain experience and learn skills, he started applying for jobs but faced several rejections from Indian companies and roasters. Seeing limited opportunities locally, he decided to step out of his comfort zone. In 2017, with no job lined up and no residency papers, he boarded a one-way flight to Toronto.
Upon arrival, the only role available was housekeeping at a Greek café called Coffee Island. Maria, the owner, looked at his résumé and said, “You’re overqualified. The only job I have is housekeeping.”
Shravan’s answer was simple: “I’ll take it.”
Within weeks, he moved from housekeeping to the cash counter, and then behind the bar. Coffee Island offered 25-plus coffees and served nearly 950 cups a day — all without a marketing budget. Four months later, the manager left, and Shravan took over operations.
On Sundays, he and his wife carried coffee samples through Toronto’s neighbourhoods, visiting local roasters. He also earned an advanced certification from the Canadian Barista Academy, honing his brewing skills, workflow efficiency, and consistency.
Then his back gave out. A slipped disk forced him to roast with a heating belt just to stand. That’s when he met Grant Gamble, a veteran in the specialty scene.
Grant heard his story and said, “Your strength is sourcing. Go back to your roots. Build from there.”
It was the nudge he needed.
Shravan D.S. carefully processing coffee beans at Kalledevarapura estate.
Coffee cheries drying at Kalledevarapura estate.
Nothing will teach you like mistakes. The idea is to learn from it, dust off, and pick yourself up.
- Shravan
Building Beanrove, One Relationship at a Time
Returning to India in 2018, Shravan started from the ground up. They built the roastery completely from scratch, brick by brick, starting with bare concrete and walls, and equipped it with a compact Giesen roaster he’d sourced with the help of a friend. Instead of cold calls, sales grew naturally through relationships.
One meeting in Delhi became a defining moment. Bharat Singhal of Bili Hu Coffee had secured Shravan a 15-minute slot with the Mr. Vikram Oberoi, Chief Executive Officer of the company — the kind of meeting that’s usually over before the coffee cools.
They set up early, rehearsed their pitch, and braced for the clock. But minutes stretched into hours as they talked roast profiles, sourcing, and showcasing single-estate coffee. Four hours later, Mr. Vikram Oberoi agreed to give Billi Hu coffee a chance.
That win opened doors to Taj, Jones the Grocer, and other high-end establishments. It proved to Shravan that success wasn’t about flashy campaigns — it was about being ready, passionate, and willing to invest time in building trust.
From there, Beanrove grew organically. Amit Patel’s partnership at Kokoro Coffee opened the Gujarat market, where they now hold a major portion of the specialty segment. On the estate side, Rohan and Nikita of Devarkhan Estate trusted Shravan to roast and even brand their coffee, confident the partnership would flourish. Over time, Beanrove went on to collaborate with many other estates such as Wood way Estate, Seethuraman, and Badra, introducing their coffees to roasters like Subko, Blue Tokai, and Kaffee Cerrado. They partnered with estates such as Gunibyle, Aghora, Halase, Sri Gowri, Yashwanth Farms, Gangecool, Ram Estate, and Hegbal Estate, bringing their coffees to market. In Araku, they adopted the village of Dumbriguda Mandal, introducing its coffee to the market via Kokoro coffee through project Sarada.
“If a client comes, we’ll open up our network like nobody’s business,” Shravan says.
And he means it — from sourcing machines to training baristas to connecting roasters with planters, every deal is built on trust.
Elegantly packaged, the Beanrove coffee box.
Behind the scenes at Beanrove, where skill and passion create the perfect roast
Where the Heart Is
Today, Beanrove supplies to about 750 coffee shops across India. Each lot is customised from processing style to roast profile to match a client’s exact vision — whether that’s a stone-fruit brightness or a berry-forward depth.
But for Shravan, the numbers aren’t the legacy. The real story is the people — the Greek café owner who gave him a start, the veteran in Canada who pushed him back to his roots, the roasters and planters who trusted him, and the lesson from his father after that first export rejection: “How do we make it better?”
Coffee may be the product, but people are the true source of growth. Every connection brought him a story, a skill, or a nudge in the right direction, shaping the path to where he is now.
And perhaps that’s the most consistent note in his brew — in the end, it’s not just coffee Shravan has been cultivating all these years. It’s connection.
If a client comes, we’ll open up our network like nobody’s business.
- Shravan
