On a slow February afternoon, Bengaluru is uncharacteristically hot — but Arshiya Bose, founder of Black Baza Coffee, has preempted this, choosing to meet in a cafe that is dense with plants and the ripple of a cool breeze. This change of weather, in what is popularly known as the Garden City, is one of the consequences of the urbanism that Karnataka has seen in the last few decades.
The team is divided between those who handle the operations and others who work on the ground conducting surveys and engaging with growers on behalf of the brand.“It’s a simple process. The beans are picked, pulped and dried, then sold to us for hulling, grading and roasting,” she explains, as she drinks a cup of black coffee — Black Baza Coffee’s mild, soft-tasting Ficus bean brew.
‘Soliga’ translates to ‘the people of the bamboo’ which, according to Bose, possibly indicates the historical significance of bamboo in the tribe’s ecological heritage and traditions. “The Soligas, like many indigenous peoples, are forest dwellers, and they like to grow crops in harmony with nature, of which their knowledge is innate. The challenge is then to create a market based on this.”
In challenging the omnipresent dicta about coffee production, Bose undertakes a mammoth task. Coffee, a crop and beverage that has been the centre of human interaction and life for centuries, comes with the baggage of industries past and present, and vicious competition in the field of ethical and non-ethical brands alike. But Bose is less concerned with profit than she is with impact.