Subko Coffee is a Mumbai-born café that handles specialty coffee, craft bread, and bean-to-bar chocolate all under one roof. It processes in-house both of two crops that are grown in India.
| Item | Details |
|---|---|
| Legal name | Subko Coffee |
| Year founded | 2020 |
| Headquarters | Mumbai (Maharashtra) |
| Founder | Rahul Reddy |
| Site | Bandra (roastery and café), Colaba (The Cacao Mill), The Craftery, and others |
| Products handled | Specialty coffee, craft bread, bean-to-bar chocolate, viennoiserie |
| Investors | Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath, and others |
| Listing | Unlisted |
Both coffee and cacao have growing regions in India. Coffee is known from Coorg and Chikmagalur in Karnataka and the Nilgiris in Tamil Nadu. Cacao is grown in South India, and in recent years there has been a push to raise its quality.
Subko processes both in-house. It buys green coffee beans and roasts them, and makes chocolate bars from cacao beans start to finish (bean-to-bar). Cutting out intermediaries between the growing region and the storefront lets it explain the ingredients' provenance and control the final result itself.
Not many companies hold both coffee roasting and cacao processing under one roof. Since both share roasting as a common process, there's overlap in equipment and know-how.
Founder Rahul Reddy grew up in the US, worked as a development economist in Europe, then returned to India and founded Subko in 2020. He opened the first roastery and café in Bandra, Mumbai, and has since added locations such as The Cacao Mill and The Craftery in the Colaba district.
The offer centers on single-origin and blended specialty coffee, alongside small-batch craft bread, bean-to-bar chocolate, and viennoiserie such as croissants. It also carries items that move Indian dishes into pastry and bread formats, such as haleem quiche and butter chicken pot pie.
Its investors include Zerodha founder Nikhil Kamath.
It's worth considering as a partner for anyone wanting to source Indian cacao. Japan's confectionery industry centers on beans from Ghana and Ecuador, and Indian cacao has little distribution. Few operators control everything from growing region to processing, so a partner who can explain provenance is valuable.
For coffee as well, it can serve as a point of contact for sourcing directly from Indian growing regions. When a Japanese roaster wants to handle Indian beans, dealing directly with a farm involves heavy procedures. Going through a local company that also roasts is an option.
MORE
Kwality Wall's (India) | HUL separated frozen from ambient distributionCoffee Day Enterprises (Cafe Coffee Day) | The pioneer of Indian cafés, now smallerEverest Food Products | 42 spice blends, and a 2024 recallCG Foods India | Sidestepped Maggi with instant noodles eaten without boilingVeeba | Brought foodservice-grade quality control straight into retailUdaan | The largest B2B e-commerce platform supplying small shopsSOJAPAN
We support Japanese companies entering India, from market research through local partner development, test sales, and import.