In 2016, it was a chance conversation that led to the inception of one of India’s leading artisanal cheese brands, Käse Cheese. Co-founders Anuradha Krishnamoorthy and Namrata Sundaresan brought their combined skills to the table. Anuradha was already running a 40-seater call centre employing people with disabilities such as hearing impairment. “This was for people with formal education, but I also wanted to do something that would cater to those who had not completed their education formally. I wanted to train girls with disabilities in something food-related so that they could find employment in other places. Namrata had just completed a cheesemaking course at Coonoor and she thought we should try our hand at it. That’s how we started Käse. We weren’t looking at a brand back then, but from there on, everything just grew organically.”
Namrata busts myths about the challenges of making cheese in tropical Chennai. “Cheesemaking is not actually a cold country activity. Cheesemaking is the oldest form of milk preservation. Milk itself has a shelf life of only 4 hours, so human beings started domesticating animals around 18,000 years ago for cheese. Sheep was the first. The first cheese was made with sheep milk in the golden crescent – Mesopotamia, Egypt… really hot places. It was much later that it travelled to the cold places. So, while cheesemaking in a hot country has got its challenges, cheese is primarily a microbial activity. Microbes help in maturing the cheese and we also know that whenever there is a little warmth, microbes are really happy. So, we have learnt how to work with that and turn it into an advantage.”
The one thing that Anuradha and Namrata were clear about, was the need for a product that was clean in every sense. This led to the inception of The Pastoral Project. “As urban consumers, we have grown up in a time where there is a lot available to us,” explains Namrata. “So, there is a disconnect with food. Milk is something we expect to arrive every morning at our doorstep in a bottle. When we started making cheese, I learnt that it’s not an everyday product. It’s seasonal, the composition of milk changes, and it is only available during the lactation cycle of the animal. So, making great cheese meant that the one single raw material we used had to be amazing. We started working with pastoral communities, creating impact, tapping into resources that are already available and creating linkage.
Anuradha adds, “We’ve been working with milk from A2 cows, desi cow breeds, and small farms that engage in grazing where calves are not separated from the cows early on. The cheese that we make is also very clean in that we use no preservative. We use sea salt for preservation.”
In terms of varieties, the brand offers more than 40 different kinds of cheese, ranging from lavender-infused cheddar to Manchego and even Molagapodi-coated cheddar. Among their awards are the Nari Shakti Puruskar, and the World Cheese Awards. “The Nari Shakti Puruskar was a reminder that with recognition comes responsibility, and we had to keep social impact at the heart of our business,” says Namrata. “World Cheese Awards was amazing – there were 4,500 odd cheeses from across the world. We sent our cheese without any expectation the first year, and got a bronze for our lavender cheese. The next year of course there was expectation, and we won a silver!”
Namrata is also India’s only training partner for the Academy of Cheese. “Cheesemaking in India, especially natural cheesemaking is like a blank canvas. We started seven years ago, there are people who started before us, but it’s a market that is still gaining momentum. I invested a month or two every year, going to a different place and learning about cheesemaking. I had some amazing teachers and realised that we don’t have access to many of these resources in India and there’s a lot more that can be done. There should be people who can sell cheese, market it, graders, cheesemongers… Through the Academy of Cheese, I’ve got a structured programme where I’m trying to create a market to train future professionals.”
Anuradha believes that as a women-led organisation employing a majority of women employees, they play to each other’s strengths. “While I take care of the day-to-day activities, Namrata is the primary cheesemaker and she brings flavour to the business. Until some time ago, we had only women - we have a couple of men now. Even the organisations we are working with – from the food consultant to social media marketing - we find that by default all of them are women!”