Mithilesh abandoned his pursuit for CA and entered the field of coffee, something close to his heart.

Mithilesh Vajalwar is the CEO of the Nagpur based company Corridor Seven Coffee Roasters. His company acquires top quality coffee beans from all over the world, roasts them in their factory and then ships the roasted coffee to all over India. Mithilesh passed coffee tasting exams in Melbourne and got his Q-grading. He is among the top 20 Q-graders in India. He also won the Aeropress Coffee Championships and represented India in the world championships.

In his school days he was a national level Badminton player and travelled a lot. During his travels he got exposed to a variety of coffee and got hooked to it from his school days itself.  After school he started pursuing CA and went to Melbourne in 2015. There his passion for coffee was aroused as Melbourne is the coffee capital of the world. There he met many roasters, tasters and brewers.

When he came back to India, he decided to abandon his pursuit for CA and enter the coffee roasting business. He did a course, worked for a coffee company and again went to Australia and faced some real coffee related exams.

After coming back well trained in all aspects of the coffee business he started his coffee roasting plant in Nagpur. He believes coffee does not have borders and coffee was what he wanted to do. Though Nagpur is a tier two city, he got a very good response. He also started a cafe which sees decent footfall. He says initially it was a challenge to build a community which liked his coffee but gradually with word of mouth his brand got established. Cafes started calling him for his brand of roasted beans.

Mithilesh advises the newcomers not to limit themselves to a baseline and to enjoy their work.

During Covid times he had to shut down his cafe and there were big losses in business. Now, things are looking up and business has been good for the past few months. He thinks coffee is not just a trend but it has become a long lasting culture. He also does coffee-writing, coffee-photography, podcasts, seminars etc to promote coffee which he thinks are very necessary in today’s times.

His mom who started from scratch at an advanced age but became a huge distributor for Tupperware is his role model. He is also inspired by some great names in the coffee world who have been his mentors.

His favorite quote is “If you feel you might not be able to swim, definitely take a dive.”