Where the wild coffee beans are

Cornerstone, Tat Tvam Asi, Hulikere, Agora. The names may evoke disparate traditions and images—English country manors, Vedic philosophy, obscure hamlets in Karnataka, ancient Greek democracies—but what they have in common is coffee. These are four of the six “wildlife friendly” certified estates in Karnataka’s Chikmagalur region from where the Bengaluru-based Wild Kaapi sources its beans.

The certification is provided by the US-based Wildlife Friendly Enterprise Network (WFEN), whose stated goal is to “conserve threatened wildlife while contributing to the economic vitality of rural communities”. Wild Kaapi was founded in 2017 by renowned conservation biologist Krithi Karanth and her husband, Avinash Sosale. The idea originated from an academic study that Karanth had worked on—a survey of 187 areca, rubber and coffee plantations in Karnataka’s Western Ghats to determine how the cultivation of each of these cash crops impacts biodiversity.