OUR NEIGHBORHOOD, SOME YEARS AGO
Before ikviti had a name, it had a table. There was a coffee shop in our neighborhood where the two of us — Jarnail and Surleen — went for everything we needed to do together. We planned our day jobs there. We held our meetings there. We mapped out our parenting journey there. We sometimes fought there, and we often just vented about work and life there. The baristas became extended family. Somewhere between the second cup and the third, we realized something: this place had become a home outside our home.
And we weren't alone. All around us, at other tables, other people were living the same journey in the same room. That, we decided, is how it should be — everyone deserves a home outside their home. ikviti exists to build them.
THE HOME ROASTERY
The coffee obsession — and the taster.
The morning cups turned into something more. Jarnail followed the interest to coffee farms in South India, then to the best coffees in the world, then to roasting at home — until our house had a small café corner where friends and family were hosted, roasted for, and brewed for.
Every roast faced the same examiner. Surleen — a PhD in Reproductive Biology and Chief Embryologist by profession, with a scientist's uncompromising palate — has always been the taster of the house: a seeker of quiet places with great coffee wherever in the world she finds herself, and a tough customer to please. Jarnail would roast, cup, and prepare a special just for her; only with her approval did a coffee move forward. That quality gate never closed — it simply became ikviti's.
THE CHASE
The Colombian chase.
It was Surleen who introduced Jarnail to Colombian coffees, and there was no looking back. One ambition took root: to find that taste in an Indian coffee. It took a long trail of toil and discovery — estates visited, lots cupped, roasts rejected — until we found it at Cauvery Peak.
The Caturra varietal — the Colombian cousin, grown in India. It is now the home coffee served at our cafés every day.
THE CONVICTION
Fresh, in a world of frozen.
We noticed something else about coffee shops: the coffee gets all the love, and the food is largely frozen. We wanted to test a different idea — that a specialty café could serve genuinely fresh food, even in a limited space. That conviction is why ikviti bakes, cooks, and ferments in-house to this day.
1 JANUARY 2024 — NEW GURGAON
The first café.
The chance came on a visit to family in new Gurgaon, 45 kilometres from home. What if a coffee shop served not a few friends, but the 900 families of a residential complex? We opened on the first of January, 2024, in 200 square feet — a café you could walk to, so a good cup and fresh food were right next door.
THE LESSON
What it taught us.
We went in thinking we would create a community. We were wrong, in the best way — the community already existed; we just needed to plug in. Alongside the coffee we ran the ikviti circle: residents gathering to make their neighborhood better and to keep discrimination — caste, gender, color — out of community life, while celebrating together.
Then the model taught us its flaw: people from outside wanted to join, and the gates that kept the society cozy kept them out. That lesson carried us to Delhi — SDA Market, opposite IIT Delhi — where the doors are open to everyone: residents, professors, students, brokers mid-deal, and anyone passing with time on their hands.
MALAYSIA → DELHI
The sourdough chapter.
On a stopover in Malaysia between work travels, sourdough became an apprenticeship — and it followed us home. ikviti now bakes its own line of 48-hour slow-fermented breads at our base kitchen, and our budding baker has been trained to turn them out with ease. They quietly became our best-selling product online. Fresh, never frozen — the original conviction, proofed for 48 hours.
TODAY
Where the idea stands now.
Spaces in New Gurgaon and SDA Market, a base kitchen where the coffee is roasted and the sourdough is baked, and pop-ups wherever a good conversation might happen. ikviti remains an idea in motion — we'll go where community gathers, and the coffee and bread will follow.
— Jarnail & Surleen, co-founders