Ahaana Coffee wants to boost Australia’s consumption of Indian coffee, and is using a special relationship with producers at origin to do so.
Relationships are everything for green bean importers, especially at origin. If importers don’t have strong, trusting relationships with people on the ground, how do they know they’re getting the best coffee possible, and at the best price?
They’re the crucial middleman between the start of coffee’s journey as a commodity, and the end of it as a high-quality consumer good.
For Ahaana Coffee, a green bean importer based in Melbourne’s east, the relationships it holds with its coffee producers in India are watertight. They’re far from purely transactional, they’re close like family – because they are exactly that.
After more than a year of planning, Founder Rajesh Nair has brought Ahaana to market with his wife, Alamelu who is the fifth-generation of a coffee farming family.
Her family estates are in Coorg, Karnataka and Yecaud, Tamil Nadu, and they want to highlight the best of Indian coffee produced at the estates owned by the Mena family.
Starting from scratch
Ahaana Coffee is still quite a new player in the coffee importing market, with the business having only gone fully operational less than 12 months ago.
Yet, Rajesh and the team still have 16 different categories of coffee available.
There are eight Arabica and eight Robusta products available, some of which are natural, and some of which are washed.
Rajesh says while much of Australian coffee culture centres around Arabica, it’s Ahaana’s Robusta stocks that have been earning great praise so far.
“In terms of the assessment and scoring of the beans, ours tend to sit somewhere between a 78 and 83 and have a nutty and caramelly flavour profile,” says Rajesh.
“In July 2025 we started to engage with roasters and providing them with samples. Most of the roasters who tried it came back to us with very positive feedback, which was great to hear, a lot of which was actually about the quality of flavour of our Robusta.
“Our Robusta, in terms of quality, flavour profile, and price-point, are definitely better than a lot of other Robustas on the market. About 10 to 20 per cent of the coffee imported into Australia is Robusta, so there’s a great market for high-quality here.”
While Rajesh says Ahaana is currently best suited to roasters operating in the commercial coffee space, he hopes to extend the business into the specialty coffee sector in the near future.
“We need to do some work back at the plantation around our processing to make it happen, but moving into specialty is definitely a long-term goal of ours.”
The name ‘Ahaana’ is no coincidence, either. Deeply rooted in Indian culture, it’s a name of Sanskrit origin and translates to ‘dawn’, or the ‘first ray of sunlight’.
“Currently, the beans from the plantation are provided to the Middle East, Europe, and domestically in India,” says Rajesh.
“This is new territory, to bring them to Australia, so the name of the business not only references that, but it’s also the name of my daughter so it’s a tribute to her.”
India as a coffee origin
Although India may be world-renowned for its tea, it’s one of the world’s leading coffee producers in terms of its overall output. Indian saint Baba Budan is credited with bringing coffee to India in the 17th century, with production increasing during the French and British colonial rule from the mid 18th to 20th century.
Ranked seventh in the world by the United States Department of Agriculture, with a total of 6.05-million 60-kilogram bags projected for the 2025/26 harvest.
Total coffee exports from India totalled more than US$2 billion, with Russia, Italy, and Germany the three leading importers of the product, with Belgium, the United States (US), and Japan also key importers.
Coffee production in India is dominated by the southern states of the country, with the Karnataka region believed to account for as much as more than 70 per cent of the entire nation’s coffee production, including the plantations Ahaana sources its coffee from.
These are located in the northern part of Coorg, Karnataka, on the eastern slopes of the Western Ghat mountains.
“Gopalpur Estate is the main estate, but there are four different estates that we source from,” he says.
“The main city in Coorg is called Madikeri. Golpalpur Estate is about 15 to 20 kilometres away.
“The altitude is between 900 and 1200 metres, and the varietal that is predominantly grown there is Cauvery, which is a hybrid of the Caturra and Hibredo di Timor varietals.
“About 65 per cent of our plants are Arabica, and 35 per cent are Robusta, and some of the trees on the estate are more than 40 years old.”
Cauvery, often called a Catimor-derivative, was developed by the Central Coffee Research Institute in India, and has been commercially available since the 1980s.
It’s renowned for not only being a high-yield and coffee leaf rust-resistant varietal, but also typically present a bright acidity and pronounced sweet aftertaste with strong body.
Indian coffee in Australia
Indian coffee is rapidly gaining popularity in Australia, both for its inclusion in espresso blends, with its high-quality Robusta bringing an extra punchiness, or in more traditional brewing methods.
There are now local roasters who specialise in Indian coffee, local cafés who serve Indian coffee brewed in the traditional kaapi filter method, and a growing appetite among coffee lovers to experience new and exciting coffees from around the world.
According to TradingEconomics, Australia’s import of coffee and coffee products from India is gaining significant traction. In 2020, just US$13.6 million worth of these products were imported, while in 2025 that figure almost tripled to US$32.3 million.
The popularity of Indian coffee in Australia is on the rise, and Ahaana Coffee is ready to highlight the capacity of this high-potential origin.
For more information, visit ahaana.coffee
This article appears in the April 2026 edition of BeanScene. Subscribe HERE.
