.jpg)
By Heneage Mitchell
Kaapi machines involves three partners who decided in 2007 to form the first dedicated coffee equipment company in India, One of the prominent partners is CMA who have been present in the market for 11 years and have been supplying coffee machines to India though a distributor and have also been supplying espresso machines to the biggest coffee shop chain in India. The second partner, Mahlkoenig of Germany, was also represented by a distributor, KLRF, and has been active in the domestic industrial and shop grinder segment.
Both international partners decided to take India more seriously and open up their own office in the country as a joint venture they named Kaapi Machines, together with a third partner from India, McKinnon India Pvt., based in Coimbatore.
"The sole idea of opening up the office in India has been to penetrate more deeply into the emerging coffee retail industry of India as distributors can only aim or reach up to a certain segment," explained Vikram Khurana, c.e.o. of Kaapi Machines. "Opening up our own office with our own team involves a bigger vision and task to provide the right equipment at the right price along with quality and dependable service."
Both the companies wanted to reach out to the end users in a closer way to understand their precise requirements in order to feed the right capacity equipment to India. Kaapi Machines works with a distributor network covering all regions of India and is headquartered in Bangalore.
"We track the activities of the distributors and keep a close eye on the pricing structure being followed and the service extended to the end users," said Khurana. "Kaapi provides sales and service support to the distributors to push coffee machines and promote knowledge of coffee to the upcoming entrepreneurs in the coffee business. The relations with all the key customers, including domestic coffee chains and international entrants, is maintained directly by Kaapi as it gives an added confidence to customers being dealt with directly by the principal company. The coffee equipment segment is still quite disorganized, prices have been abnormal at times, so reach has been limited and this has made many investors cautions on investing in the cafe business. Kaapi Machines also extends a free barista training program to all its customers and provides them vital links into the coffee industry and essentials like coffee beans, syrups, espresso blends, and so on, all at no cost, in order to support their venture."
On the other hand, Kaapi Machines has become the first company to provide sales and service to industrial customers for Probat roasters and Mahlkoenig grinders in India. All the service support and upkeep of the industrial equipment provided by Mahlkoenig and Probat is maintained by Kaapi, making the company a one-point contact for sales and service solutions.
The teamThe entire management and its team comes with a coffee background.
"As a philosophy Kaapi Machines doesn’t believe in hiring a sales person with MBA qualifications," Khurana confided. "We look for dynamic youngsters with a coffee background as a passion for coffee is needed to sell a coffee machine and it requires a lot of talking about coffee, which is of course our core product. Most of the sales team are ex-baristas who can communicate to the customers in a professional manner and guide them to the right cup of coffee."
Khurana himself also comes with a prestigious coffee pedigree having been awarded the Silver Medal of the World Barista Championship 2002, which he entered as Indian Barista Champion. He was headhunted by the board to head up the company in August, 2007.
"Working in the coffee industry in India and promoting the espresso culture, traditionally unknown to most Indians, has been a very pleasant but tough journey: so far, it has proved to be both challenging and rewarding," admitted Khurana. "The Indian coffee retail segment is undergoing a change, probably similar to that which Australia underwent 15 years ago and the UK experienced 45 years ago. Along with the international chains that see a huge potential in the Indian coffee retail industry we also see a lot of home-grown entrepreneurs venturing into the specialty coffee beverage segment as India sees a massive growth in tier-two and tier-three cities now following on the heels of the successes in the major metropolitan population centers."
Kaapi has sold espresso machines as far away as Shillong, a small city in the state of Meghalaya in the northeast of India, in the hills of Kullumanali in North India and on some remote beaches in Goa and Kerala in West and South India.
"Mostof the upcoming chains are targeting the key metros which already have a sizeable population of cafes and the day is not far off when cafes would be seen in close proximity of 100 meters of each other on every high street of the metro cities," according to Khurana. "Most of the bakery and food outlets see a high potential for espresso coffee retail opportunities, so we are pushing them to go for quality espresso machines, good espresso blends and training them how to brew traditional Italian coffee. India is still foremost a milk coffee drinking nation as our taste buds fall into a more creamier and sweeter taste preference."
The dynamics of Indian coffee drinking habits have changed over recent years, and Kaapi is one of the prime movers behind this shift.
"What was missing in the Indian market before Kaapi came along was appropriate consultation opportunities for coffee shop owners and retailers," Khurana told Tea & Coffee Asia. "Machines of the appropriate capacity for the intended location were often not purchased. Installing a two-head espresso machine in an outlet that barely reached 50 servings a day is clearly not an economically viable solution, but that was the option commonly selected by most outlets because of a lack of experience and knowledge. Equally, larger outlets in many instances were struggling with 2.5 liter single group machine and catering to over 250 cup servings a day, thus affecting the end cup quality. Kaapi machines now acts as a consultant to its customers large and small to provide them with the right information to make an informed choice and select the ideal equipment at the right price for the specific application it is intended for."
.jpg)
Coffee phenomenonUntil now, coffee has been more of a lifestyle beverage option, particularly in the North and West part of India, where making coffee is commonplace for business meetings or just hanging out. Most coffee sales comprise cappuccinos and the rich, cold coffees preferred by younger consumers and the masses who visit the cafes. More and more customers are becoming knowledgeable about what constitutes a good cup of cappuccino and one might find customers giving back a cappuccino if it doesn’t meet their expectations. That shows a positive attitude of the Indians towards this beverage, which was once confined to the households of South India, in the form of filter coffee, for many centuries.
"The acceptance of the espresso culture has been far beyond expectations of the Indian specialty coffee retailers and customers and more focus has to be emphasised now on quality barista training, which still has a long way to go," Khurana clarified. "Semi-automatic machines are the most common choice of a cafe because of the human element and passion involved and the higher taste coefficient these machines can supply in the hands of a skilled barista, while the pricier fully automatics are preferred by hotels and corporate customers because they are easy to use and do not require the same degree of skill to cooperate."
Kaapi Machine has been a proud sponsor of the Indian Barista Championship since its formation and plays an active role in coaching and guiding the young baristas into the profession.
The future of this dynamic company is inextricably tied up with the burgeoning espresso culture sweeping India, a phenomenon that Kaapi Machines can justifiably claim to be at the forefront of.
| About Kaapi Machines Kaapi Machines is an Italian–German-Indo triad company formed with a view to propel the café culture in the country. Kaapi Machines offers world-class equipment under a single roof, thereby obviating the necessity of going to multiple importers, suppliers and vendors. The partners Mahlkoenig have been manufacturing hand-made electrical grinders and graters since 1924. It has been manufacturing the famous Mahlkoenig brand of professional grinders and graters, which are always technically up to date, for 75 years. These machines are of extremely good quality and dependability, because the company not only works with modern machinery but also with the help of its long experience. Mahlkoenig was the first-ever grinder sponsor of the World Barista Championship 2005 in Seattle McKinnon India Private Ltd., is based at Coimbatore in South India. Today, after more than 200 years of operation, the company is simply known as McKinnon and is a joint venture with the Eltex Group of Companies. It offers a wide range of machinery for both wet and dry processing of coffee i Its equipment has been designed and built, with uncompromising quality, by engineers and plantation managers with practical experience, so that the equipment ensures that the coffee is well processed, without damage and will retain its inherent characteristics and flavor. Its machines are exported to countries around the world, including Hawaii, Vietnam, Burundi and Indonesia. When McKinnon customers around the world talk of plantation machinery, they reserve the highest praise for the company whose build quality gives them equipment with consistently high performance levels. |