The idea emerged as an outcome of Founder, Arshiya Bose’s doctoral research project. A human geographer, Arshiya completed her Ph.D. from the University of Cambridge, in the UK, on market incentives for conserving biodiversity – she used certification for coffee as a case study. Her research proposed that there was tremendous unmet potential to build a locally relevant movement for sustainable coffee.
She founded Black Baza Coffee in 2016 as a means to build an alternative to the global certification model.