How Hyderabad’s Manam is putting Indian craft chocolate on the world map

Like its flagship Karkhana in Hyderabad, termed by the TIME magazine as one of the ‘world’s greatest places in 2024,’ the store in Delhi isn’t a typical chocolate shop. It’s a factory you can walk through, a café, a beverage bar with over 30 chocolate drinks, a place where you can make your own tablet, attend a workshop, sip an affogato, watch bonbons being made, and track the beans — literally track them, via QR codes — back to the farm where they were grown.

At the tasting session, Chaitanya encouraged us to notice and feel what we were eating even as he explained the history of chocolate and how craft chocolate arrived on the scene. We tasted chocolates infused with coconut curry leaves, matcha, caramelised white chocolate, and learned about the invention of farine lactée (flour with milk), designed for infants who couldn't be breastfed, by German-born Swiss confectioner Henri Nestlé in Vevey, Switzerland, in 1867. It was an invention that revolutionised human nurturing and reduced infant mortality.

We explored the differences between alkalized Dutch-processed cocoa powder, which flattens chocolate's natural acidity, and unprocessed cocoa with its bright, tart notes. We discussed compounds and the palm oil content in industrial chocolates we all consume mindlessly. Chaitanya touched upon tempering, the lack of proper regulation, and how chocolate has traditionally been industrial. About control of labour, shipping, and supply chains, it’s tied to colonial histories, and slavery, and was commodified by giants like Cadbury and Hershey’s.

The Manam story

Launched in August 2023, the brand (Manam means ‘we’ or ‘us’ in Telugu) has already garnered 17 international awards, including recognition from the International Institute of Chocolate & Cacao Tasting and the UK Academy of Chocolate. Two years down the line, it is redefining Indian craft chocolate by unlocking the untapped potential of Indian cacao and putting it on the global map.

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Through its sister concern, Distinct Origins, it has built a community of over 100 farmers and established India’s largest (and world’s second largest) fine-flavour cacao fermentery in West Godavari (Andhra Pradesh), pioneering scientific fermentation and drying techniques that bring out the nuanced flavours of Indian cacao.

Manam Chocolate’s extensive portfolio spans over 250 concepts across 45 categories: from signature tablets and bonbons to truffles, spreads, barks, and crafted desserts. The product lines include the Single Farm, Single Origin, Creative Fermentation, and Signature Blends series, along with a wide range of indulgences like brownies, cookies, hot chocolate, gelato, viennoiserie, and baking ingredients, all designed to showcase the versatility and richness of Indian cacao in forms both familiar and experimental.

Five years ago, Chaitanya, who grew up around his family’s iconic Hyderabad sweets business Almond House, was, by his own admission, eating what he now calls ‘bad chocolate.’ He, like most of us, assumed Belgium was the gold standard, that European chocolate was the pinnacle. But the more he dug into the chocolate story, the more he realised that most of what we were consuming wasn’t actually chocolate at all — not in the way it could be, not in the way it should taste, and certainly not in the way it was made.

For Chaitanya and his team at Manam Chocolate, now one of India’s most respected craft chocolate brands, it started more organically. “We just began doing some work. One thing led to another. It was only later that we realised everything we thought we knew about chocolate was wrong,” Chaitanya tells The Federal. Like many of us, Chaitanya has evolved as a consumer in other categories — whiskey, technology, clothing — where conscious choices have become the norm. But chocolate? “There’s still so much unconscious consumption there. We took that up as our flag,” he says.

Beyond Bean-to-Bar

For all his interest in the history and craft of chocolates, Manam Chocolate, says Chaitanya, didn’t set out to be evangelists. “We didn’t come in with this preconceived notion that we must tell people how to eat chocolate. Our primary goal was always to make chocolate that makes sense for Indian consumers, that fits Indian behaviours.”

That also meant doing things the hard way. Instead of simply buying cocoa beans and producing bars, Manam Chocolate chose to own the entire process —from farm to fermentation to store design. “We realised early on that the barriers to entry in chocolate are low. Anyone can melt couverture and mould it. But how do you create a differentiated process? That’s our philosophy. In many ways, it’s our DNA,” he says.

For Chaitanya, the answer also lay in complexity. “I find complexity very attractive because it lets me build layers, create entry points, and sometimes even barriers that make the journey richer for those who choose to enter. It also allows me to create a highly differentiated product and customer experience, which is what we’re aiming for? We want to wow our customers. We want to move from being a brand that people simply like, to becoming a brand that is oved beyond reason. That’s the kind of journey we’re on,” he says.

But he also understands that complexity can alienate some consumers, those who might find things too complicated or intimidating. And that’s where he draws a line. All the ‘geekiness’, all the depth are for those who are interested. “At the end of the day, the product must speak for itself. People should like it for what it is, not because of what we tell them it is. Our brand positioning is really about striking that balance. We don’t need to over-explain. People don’t have to fully understand everything for them to enjoy it,” he says.

Manam Chocolate is consciously moving beyond the early bean-to-bar makers who built India’s third wave of craft chocolate. “Those pioneers were about small-batch, artisanal chocolate with a clear ‘Indian origin’ narrative. That’s important, but we see ourselves as part of a new wave.”

The first wave, he says, was dominated by mass-market chocolates brought from abroad, sometimes bought at airport duty-free shops and gifted as exotic treats. The second involved premium imported chocolate, still industrial but dressed up in luxury. The third was led by small, bean-to-bar Indian makers, like Mason & Co. from Auroville, Naviluna from Mysuru, and Soklet from Tamil Nadu.

These early architects introduced the bean-to-bar process, highlighted Indian cacao, and built small-batch credibility. But they remained niche, largely online, mostly bar-focused, and rarely visible in mainstream spaces. The chocolate aisle still belonged to Amul, Hershey’s, Cadbury, Lindt and what have you.

But Manam Chocolate, Chaitanya says, is trying to script the fourth wave. Unlike other craft movements — coffee, gin, beer — where India mostly plays catch-up, chocolate in India is still wide open. For Manam Chocolate, that means expanding beyond the bar —into bonbons, cakes, cookies, beverages, and ice creams. These formats allow chocolate to fit seamlessly into Indian life. Celebrating with cakes, for example that’s part of Indian culture now. Beverages are another huge space.

‘The obvious first choice’

As far as craft chcolates in India is concerned, Manam Chocolate isn’t alone anymore. Brands like Subko Cacao in Mumbai are building their own bean-to-bar experiences. Kerala’s Paul & Mike has also become popular with its single-origin bars and inventive flavours. Soklet continues its farm-to-bar journey from the Anamalai hills. But Manam Chocolate’s edge is in how it’s building for scale.

Manam Chocolate is opening stores at airports. It’s shipping across metros. It’s working with chefs and hotels to replace imported couverture with Indian fine-flavour chocolate. It’s building a national system that could redefine how chocolate is made, sold, and eaten in India. And it’s doing all this with one eye on the threat looming in the background: craft-washing.

Big multinationals are already starting to borrow the language of craft chocolate. You see it in coffee chains that now stock “single-origin” beans and try to mimic the storytelling of specialty brands. The same thing will happen in chocolate. Chaitanya knows it. “It’s already happening globally. Single-origin, bean-to-bar — those words will get co-opted. But ultimately, the consumer knows.”

For decades, India was a net importer of chocolate, bringing in commodity cacao from West African countries like Ghana while exporting higher-value ingredients like cocoa butter. Manam Chocolate is flipping that by proving Indian cacao can reach fine-flavour standards, that the farmers can earn more, that the technology can be built here, that the best chocolate doesn’t have to come with an air ticket. And perhaps most importantly, that Indian consumers are ready to choose it.

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Manam Chocolate’s flavour profile has distinctly Indian combinations — curry leaf bonbons, chai biscuit, chocolate with banana — but Mopalla is careful not to reduce “Indian” to the usual suspects. “We don’t want to limit ourselves to cardamom and jaggery,” he says. “We’re modern, cosmopolitan, well-travelled Indians. You’ll see matcha, you’ll see orange and chocolate — things that are familiar to us, even if they don’t neatly fit the ‘Indian’ box.”

In a market worth over Rs 18,000 crore, dominated by imported brands, Manam Chocolate is carving out a new lane; premium but not alienating, scalable but still rooted in craft, indulgent but with a transparent supply chain. Manam Chocolate is shipping across India and scaling up its delivery network. “The idea is to build multiple verticals — beans, chocolate for chefs, our own product line, gifting, cakes, beverages, ice cream,” Chaitanya says.

Manam Chocolate is on a mission to build a chocolate culture that feels Indian, tastes Indian, and belongs here. Not an imported idea, not a borrowed template, not a footnote to European craft chocolate. But something that’s ours, something that finally puts Indian craft chocolate on the world map, thoughtfully, and one bar (or beverage, or bonbon) at a time. It wants everyday consumers to think of Indian chocolate as the obvious first choice.