India

History

The history of Indian coffee began in the 17th century when the Sufi saint Baba Budan reportedly smuggled seven coffee seeds from Mocha, Yemen, and planted them near his hermitage in the Baba Budan Giri hills of Karnataka. Initially cultivated as a garden curiosity, coffee remained a small-scale backyard crop until the 18th century, when commercial plantations began to emerge. The industry expanded significantly during the mid-19th century under British colonial influence, which established large-scale plantations across the Western Ghats. Over the following decades, the sector evolved from a colonial export commodity into a thriving modern industry, with India becoming the seventh-largest coffee producer globally. Today, the country has secured a distinct global identity through its shade-grown practices and the acquisition of Geographical Indication (GI) tags for its regional specialty coffees.