Man quits job to build brand on his family's century-old coffee estate and earn ₹2 cr annual income

Leaving work behind, Rishwin Devaya went back to his roots. Devaya returned to his century-old family coffee estate in Coorg to build his Riverside Coffee brand. The brand has moved from selling coffee beans to commodity markets and exporters to direct-to-consumer (D2C) sales. Today it generates Riverside Coffee ₹2 million in annual revenue, up 30% year-on-year.

Revival of a fifth generation family cafe

Riverside Coffee started in 1898 with Devaya’s great-great-grandfather, who moved to part of a larger family estate in Coorg, Karnataka to tend the rice fields. A disagreement with his brother led him to settle at the farthest end of the property, Devaya shared during a chat with Livemint.

Introducing the D2C model

Devaya wanted coffee to be the center of the business and wanted to change the way their family business operated. Having worked in the wine industry, he saw how growers could build a brand on their own produce instead of selling it to someone else in the supply chain.

“I remember looking at the model and thinking: we already have our own coffee farm, so why can’t we do the same with coffee?” he said.

In addition to cultivation, he wanted to be involved in processing, roasting, branding and selling the final product. Devaya explored what he described as an Estate-to-Cup model, drawing inspiration from the vineyard-to-bottle approach.

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Initial challenges

The transition marked a departure from a reliable and predictable business model.

Building a consumer-facing brand required significant investment in infrastructure, processing and marketing, but with no guaranteed returns.

“My father still sometimes asks himself a very practical question: ‘If we can sell this coffee today and we know exactly what we’re going to make, why are we holding it back?'” Devaya said.

The brand currently offers its products through direct sales, wholesale and online retail, along with a quaint cafe and visitor experience on the estate.

Selling directly to cafes and consumers brings its own challenges. Buyers may have different taste preferences, budgets, equipment and cooking methods. To compete in today’s growing coffee market in India, one needs to do a lot more than just marketing, he said.

“Beans can taste completely different depending on the machine, the grind, the water, the recipe or the cooking method,” Devaya said. “If something doesn’t taste right in the cafe, you can’t just say, ‘the coffee is good,'” he explained. To solve this problem, the company likes to educate buyers about coffee varieties, brewing techniques and flavor profiles. She also researched Excelsa and added it to the sampler alongside Arabica and Robusta on this trip.

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Income distribution

Devaya reveals that roughly 58% of the firm’s monthly revenue comes directly from coffee sales, while the remaining 42% comes from other channels, including wholesale, retail, cafe sales, real estate experiences and miscellaneous sources. online retail another 17%.

“Our intention was to see how much more value around coffee the estate itself could contribute.”

Impacts of climate change

Like other coffee growers, Riverside is struggling with increasingly unpredictable weather in the country. The estate has seen a lack of rainfall this year after near-ideal conditions last year and excessive rain the year before.

“Coffee is an extremely sensitive crop. Too much rain can be a problem, too little rain can be a problem; the same goes for heat and sunlight,” said the fifth-generation owner.

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“My biggest concern is not just that the climate is warming, but that the seasons we used to rely on are becoming harder to rely on,” he said.

Currently, the brand is focused on investing in marketing and distribution rather than expanding through physical locations, he concluded.