July 11 2026
Ashish D’abreo: An internationally certified Q Grader championing Indian specialty coffee
(Jul 11, 2026) Raised in a family of coffee growers, Ashish D’abreo is helping elevate India’s specialty coffee landscape. As an international Q Grader and co-founder of Maverick & Farmer Coffee, he has built a brand with cafés in Bengaluru and Goa and a 140-acre estate in Pollibetta, Coorg, producing award-winning single-estate coffees for customers in India and abroad.
A childhood steeped in coffee
However, no one imagined that the young boy who looked forward to his early cup of coffee every morning would grow up to become a well-known coffee connoisseurs; qualify as an international Q Grader, and co-found one of the country’s specialty coffee brands – Maverick & Farmer Coffee.
Ironically, it all began because he disliked milk. “I wasn’t allergic,” he laughs in a chat with The Global Indian. “I just didn’t enjoy the taste of it.” Ashish began drinking it black unusually early. “That’s where I really began understanding flavour.”
The initial cups were from Panduranga Coffee, a cherished brand of Chikkamagaluru, much sought-after in Mangalorean households. Even after moving to Bengaluru for further education, Ashish could not let it go. “My mother used to send me a fresh packet every week from Mangaluru,” he recalls. “I had a little brewer on my desk. That was my coffee.”
Discovering the world through coffee
His first career, however, was not in the world of coffee. Fresh out of business school, he entered advertising at a time when the industry itself was transforming. Along with three friends, he started an advertising agency called Origami, wearing multiple hats as copywriter, art director and creative strategist. This sense of curiosity eventually led to another venture called Bloombox, a brand strategy consultancy that helped businesses define their voice long before they entered the marketplace.
In the early 2000s, Ashish’s travels exposed him to a coffee culture that was worlds apart from what existed in India. There were backpacking trips through Southeast Asia, occasional visits to Europe, and frequent work trips to Dubai, where his advertising firm had opened a branch.
Every destination added a new dimension to his understanding of coffee. He discovered coffee shops where the beans were nearly treated like wine; roasteries with roasts named after the farmer, and baristas who talked about altitude, the soil, and processing like chefs would talk about their finest ingredients. He came back from his trips with suitcases full of coffee. “After tasting these international coffees, it was difficult to come back to what was available in India. There simply wasn’t much,” he shares.
While India had always been among the world’s largest coffee producers, most of the coffee travelled overseas and Indians rarely experienced their own finest beans. “We didn’t know where our coffee came from, who grew it, what variety it was.”
View this post on Instagram
Brewing a brand
In 2011, a coffee planter approached Bloombox with what seemed like the perfect assignment — to create a brand for his coffee. It brought together everything he loved: coffee, branding, research and understanding consumer behaviour. But by the time the presentation was ready, the client had a change of heart. “He realised it wasn’t something he wanted to do,” Ashish recalls.
That evening, Ashish met Tej Thammaiah, a friend and a coffee grower. As they chatted, Tej had a simple suggestion: if the idea was that good, why not build the brand themselves using coffee from his estate?
The brand was called Flying Squirrel and the first step was bringing in one of India’s most respected coffee experts, Sunalini Menon who helped refine the processing techniques and create what would become the brand’s signature blend – Parama. “It remains our most successful blend,” Ashish reveals.
Years later, the founders would exit Flying Squirrel and begin a new chapter with Maverick & Farmer Coffee in 2018, a brand that would push experimentation even further while remaining deeply rooted in Indian coffee. Today, the Maverick & Farmer Coffee outlets in Goa and Bengaluru, function with their own distinct identity. “Every neighbourhood has its own personality. The café should respect that.”
The brand’s newest experiential space in Kothanur, Bengaluru, is spread across nearly 9,000 sq. ft., housing a live roastery, coffee academy, retail space, community centre, and café, offering visitors a closer look at how coffee travels from bean to cup. The space also carries subtle references to the coffee estates of Coorg. Clay drying tiles traditionally used on plantations have been repurposed into the café counter, while the architecture borrows elements from old estate bungalows. “We wanted to bring a little bit of the estate into the café,” he observes.
Always a student
Ashish’s curiosity has often taken him far beyond India’s coffee-growing regions. When Bengaluru-based restaurant Kopitiam Lah wanted to introduce authentic Hainanese-style coffee, he travelled to Malaysia to understand the process first-hand. “I spent about a week there visiting factories, watching how they roasted, understanding the machinery and why they did things in a particular way,” he says.
Unlike conventional roasting, Hainanese coffee is roasted with butter and sugar, creating its signature caramelised flavour. On returning to Bengaluru, Ashish worked on recreating both the roasting process and the equipment required to produce it in India.
Eventually, he also went on to pursue the internationally recognised Q Grader certification, conducted under the Coffee Quality Institute (CQI), USA—one of the coffee industry’s most respected qualifications and often regarded as the equivalent of a sommelier’s certification in the wine world.
The preparation involved countless hours of blind tastings and sensory exercises. The final part was an intensive week of training followed by three days of examinations, during which candidates had to clear 20 separate sensory tests. “You have to pass all twenty tests,” Ashish says. “It’s incredibly nerve-racking.” He cleared each one in the very first attempt.
A world beyond coffee
Long before coffee became his calling, he was deeply involved in theatre, performing on stage and directing productions—an experience he says taught him as much about storytelling and human connection as any business ever could.
Also, a talented cook, Ashish spent months experimenting with recipes, techniques and flavours at the initial stages of Maverick & Farmer Coffee. One recipe, in particular, became something of an obsession – the pastrami. Fascinated by traditional smoking techniques, he moved a smoker into his home and spent nearly five months perfecting the beef sandwich. There were countless trials, kilos of meat, and plenty of failed attempts before he arrived at the balance of flavour and texture he was looking for. Today, that pastrami is the cafe’s bestseller, sitting comfortably alongside carefully roasted coffees that have become the brand’s signature.
Moving forward, Ashish is confident about the way Indian coffee has progressed over the last ten years. “Our coffees are slowly winning international awards and being picked up by roasters around the world. That tells us we are on the right path. We don’t need to mimic anyone else. We need to build on our own strengths and let Indian coffee be celebrated for what makes it unique,” he concludes.
ALSO READ: Seventh-generation leaders carrying forward a 200-year agricultural legacy at Kelachandra Coffee
Share with
Written By: Deepa Natarajan Lobo
How Yahvi Mariwala’s return from the US led her to the next chapter of Nandan Coffee
Written By: Bindu Gopal Rao
Brewing Big Dreams: How Avinit Bagri is scaling South Indian flavours with The Filter Coffee
Written By: Bindu Gopal Rao