Step through the doors of Gurugram’s OMO Café and you’re immediately enveloped by the rich, earthy aroma of freshly brewed coffee. It doesn’t just fill the space—it is an aroma of discovery of the familiar but in an unfamiliar way. It lingers in the air, mingling with the soft murmur of conversation, and the occasional hiss of steam behind the counter. It was in this very space that Ngarum coffee first began to take form—not in a boardroom, but in its 32-year-old founder, Grace Muivah’s heart. Soon the idea was ground to craft a coffee which is not merely ethically sourced, but carries the wildness, stories and the essence of Northeast India.
Introduced in the 1850s in Assam’s Cachar and Northeast’s Meghalaya, coffee remained the region’s forgotten crop largely due to focus on tea plantation and lack of technical support. But this first-generation coffee-forager is bringing one of the most artisanal coffee to the heart of Nagaland. “At OMO, we were already rooted in fermentation and seasonality,” Muivah reflects, adding “So the idea of serving coffee sourced from home—grown slowly, harvested with care, and roasted thoughtfully—just felt like a natural continuation of our ethos.”
Ngarum, meaning ‘my home’ or ‘coming together’, is Muivah’s quiet homage to the land and the people. A slow-grown, small-batch coffee brand, it honours indigenous wisdom, wild harvesting traditions, and the quiet dignity of origin. Muivah grew up in a place where land was never an abstraction—it was life itself. Her motto was simple: You grow what you eat. You return what you don’t. You listen to the rhythm of the seasons and shape your life accordingly. Her grandparents practised this long before the world began calling it “eco-conscious”.
Ngarum was born during the pandemic—a time when the world paused, yet the land kept growing. It was not a convenient time to build anything, let alone something so rooted in place. “There was a lot of uncertainty. But we leaned into what we did have—local knowledge, a community that cared, and the resilience of the land. We trusted the process,” she smiles. That process meant face-to-face conversations with growers, hands-on trials, and a return to traditional methods. It meant prioritising depth over speed.
“Someone sipped a cup and said, ‘This reminds me of home,’” she says, recalling the moment when she got to know she was not just offering coffee but sharing memory and identity.
Ngarum’s coffee, often intercropped with native plants, is sun-dried under forest canopies. The resulting cup is layered: earthy, vibrant and umami-rich. “It’s not polished, but it’s real,” she says with a smile. She has partnered directly with 35 growers in Nagaland and Dimasa Hills of Assam. “We walk the farms together. We discuss soil and fermentation. We learn from one another. That’s what Ngarum—coming together—truly means.” “When someone tastes Ngarum and asks, ‘Where is this from?’—they are surprised that the Northeast even grows coffee,” she says.
Still, the journey isn’t without obstacles. While government and private schemes exist to support coffee in the Northeast, the gaps remain wide—especially in processing support, and true recognition of indigenous knowledge systems. And yet, a hopeful Muivah imagines a future where coffee from Northeast India is celebrated not just for its distinct terroir, but for its way of farming and roots. Sometimes, a single cup of coffee can carry an entire world with it.