For brothers-in-law Karthikeyan Palanisamy and Harish Manoj Kumar, the thought to launch a homegrown craft chocolate model was born one night in 2015 over a few drinks.
The Coimbatore-based duo, although from vastly completely different backgrounds, have been united by a typical ideology — they weren’t afraid to dream huge and take the dangers that got here with it.
Whereas Karthikeyan managed the household textile enterprise, Harish tended to his ancestral farm in Anamalai in central Kerala, a area recognized for its nice climate and beneficial topology. In order that fateful night in 2015, when Harish — who was seeing good outcomes with the cacao plantation on the farm — instructed he needed to start out an export arm, Karthikeyan was intrigued.
Recounting why this concept caught his curiosity, he says, “Two causes. I’ve all the time dreamt of beginning one thing of my very own. And I’m a foodie. The thought appeared thrilling.”
Within the months that adopted, Soklet was born in Karthikeyan and Harish’s storage. From right here, the artisanal chocolate model exports near 24 tonnes yearly to nations throughout the globe, together with the US, Europe, New Zealand, and Japan amongst others.
Bean, bar & past
In a world dominated by premium chocolate manufacturers, explaining the magic of artisanal chocolate to individuals hasn’t been straightforward. However it has been worthwhile, the duo say.
Following the thought of beginning a model, they started experimenting with recipes off the web of their storage.
“However we made errors every time,” says Karthikeyan, including that the primary was when he tried washing the cacao beans, as he thought they appeared “soiled”.
“By no means do that. I ended up with a gooey mess. However even after I bought that step proper, there have been different elements to be careful for, such because the roasting temperature, the ratio whereas grinding and so on,” he provides.
One month and plenty of experiments later, Soklet’s first slab of chocolate was prepared, as have been its first batch of tasters — the children from the constructing.
“They’d hear {that a} batch of chocolate was within the works and would come working to pattern it,” recounts Karthikeyan, including that in 2016, they approached Nitin Chordia, one of many few chocolate tasters in South India, for his suggestions.
“I anticipated him to spit it out. However he regarded us within the eye and mentioned, ‘There’s one thing there’.”
Nevertheless, he cautioned the duo that they nonetheless had a protracted method to go earlier than Soklet’s beans could possibly be on par with normal ones.
This was a wake-up name for them to consider working with bean-to-bar makers all over the world, and one such alternative knocked on their door in 2015 within the type of a chocolate competition in Amsterdam, the place they may meet premium manufacturers.
Although the beans didn’t obtain a lot acclaim on the occasion, the duo’s initiative was met with a lot shock. “They thought it superb that India was now on its method to producing cacao beans, one thing by no means experimented with earlier than,” provides Karthikeyan.
A big second throughout the competition formed the remainder of Soklet’s journey. A premium chocolate model current on the occasion noticed potential within the beans and despatched one among their chocolate-sourcing professionals to the farm in Kerala.
“On assessing the plantations, he felt we wanted to get our post-fermentation steps right. He provided to place us in contact with a farmer from Hawaii,” recounts Harish, including that they greater than liked the thought and flew the farmer down, inviting him to spend a month with them.
Within the subsequent 12 months, following the recommendation of the farmer, the methods taught to them, and their very own learnings, Soklet was prepared to start out transport its chocolate.
A slab of artisanal delight
“Are you aware why premium chocolate manufacturers handle to get each slab of theirs to style the identical?” Karthikeyan asks. “It’s as a result of their beans undergo rounds of processing. The identical shouldn’t be attainable with artisanal chocolate, as the standard of beans from each farm varies.”
“The method begins with harvesting the cacao beans from the farms on the foothills of Pollachi. The cacao pods are damaged and the outer fleshy overlaying ‘baba’ is eliminated. The white cacao seeds are then extracted manually and crammed into drums that go to the manufacturing unit,” he explains.
He says that whereas the ‘baba’ is eaten in some communities engaged in cacao plantations, it’s of no use to the chocolate maker.
From the drums, the beans go into fermentation containers the place, relying on the local weather, they’re left for round per week. Throughout this time, the beans puff up and alter color, turning the within from purple to darkish brown by way of a “secret recipe”.
The beans are then dried, graded, roasted and damaged to take away the shells. “The ensuing nibs are floor. We add spices, sugars, and so on to the combination and it’s refined to a particle measurement of under 50 microns. Then conching occurs,” says Karthikeyan.
In the course of the conching course of, which precedes the final step, the cocoa is floor right into a fantastic paste, eliminating acidic notes. Then the chocolate is tempered and manually packaged, able to function dessert.
The candy style of success
For Harish, who stop his company job in Bengaluru in 2000 to return to Annamalai and be part of his father in farming, having the ability to lastly see Soklet’s produce attain worldwide chocolate makers holds immense sentiment.
Recounting his preliminary days of uncertainty as a farmer, he says, “My father farmed utilizing typical strategies and I might see the variety of chemical fertilisers and pesticides. I made a decision to alter course and begin natural farming on a small space of land. Whereas I didn’t see outcomes initially, I did in time and have become hopeful.”
In 2006, Harish began cacao plantations on 160 acres of the 40-year-old ancestral land. The remainder, as he says, is historical past.
At this time, 60 individuals work on the farm, whereas a workforce of eight manages the manufacturing unit, and a workforce of six the fermentation unit.
“It took us a very long time to study the methods of the commerce, and get our merchandise on the best retail cabinets,” he says, including that with 10,000 bars of chocolate produced each month, Soklet prides itself on promoting every one among these. The enterprise, he says, noticed a turnover of Rs 4 crore within the final 12 months.
You should buy your share of the artisanal chocolate right here.