Ratnagiri Estate - YC 01

Matt Chitharanjan, Namrata Asthana, and Shivam Shahi founded Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters in 2013, starting with a single one kilogram roasting machine that has since grown into a fleet of Probat roasters, including two 12 kilogram and one 25 kilogram machine, spread across four roasteries in India and one in Japan. The operation now sources from over eighty of India's best farms, with a Director of Coffee cupping every batch and Q Grade certified quality control ensuring consistency across more than one hundred physical outlets in cities including Delhi NCR, Mumbai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, and Pune. Blue Tokai roasts twice a week, Monday through Friday, focusing exclusively on 100 percent Arabica specialty coffee sourced directly from Indian estates. The company's trajectory from a bedroom roastery to a business with over 2,500 employees and significant venture funding reflects the scale of India's specialty coffee awakening. Blue Tokai has become the country's most visible specialty roaster, proving that Indian grown coffee can anchor a brand of national and now international reach.