There are some mornings you remember for the rest of your life. For us, one of those mornings began with a message saying, “You are in the paper.” A friend had sent a link to a story in the New Indian Express about Bengalureans at the World Economic Forum, and somewhere in the middle of ministers, founders and global leaders, there was a small section titled “Let’s Go Coconuts.”
In a handful of lines, that section captured something we had been trying to express for years: that coconut products created in and around a small town like Arsikere can travel all the way to Davos, and that they carry much more with them than just taste. They carry questions about climate, farming, women’s work, pricing and dignity. Seeing that written down by someone outside our circle felt strangely grounding.
This blog is our attempt to slow that moment down, to put context around those few sentences, and to show you what it really means when a story like this appears in The New Indian Express.
The moment we saw our name in The New Indian Express
If you run a small, quietly built brand, you do not sit refreshing news sites expecting to see yourself. Our days usually start with farmers, batches, quality checks, and very ordinary worries like whether a particular coconut product will hold up in summer heat.
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That is why opening a national daily and seeing a reporter describe your work, your town and your journey to Davos feels surreal.
There was a line about coconut chips being carried from Arsikere to those glass walled corridors in Switzerland. There was a mention of a women led collective, of rural artisans, of how these snacks and crafts had been offered to ministers, business leaders and even Ananya Birla. In a space usually reserved for macro economics and policy, a journalist had chosen to spend precious column space on a coconut story.
It felt less like a "we made it" moment and more like a mirror. Someone had looked at what we do every day and decided it was worth explaining to the rest of the world.
From Arsikere to a global stage - how a coconut product travels that far?
A small town, a coconut belt and a stubborn question
Arsikere sits in the wider coconut belt of Karnataka. For decades, coconuts here have mostly travelled as raw produce, loose husked shells loaded into trucks and sent off to mills or markets. It is honest work, but it leaves farmers painfully exposed to price swings and middlemen.
The stubborn question at the back of our minds was simple: what if a larger part of the value stayed closer to home. What if the people who grow and process coconuts were not just suppliers, but partners in building finished coconut products that could stand on any shelf in any city.
That question did not disappear during the pandemic. If anything, it became sharper. When you see supply chains snap and livelihoods wobble, you realise how fragile a system built only on raw commodity pricing really is.
Why did we build an all coconut brand in the first place?
Tengin was not born from a slide deck or a market research report. It started from walking through farms, sitting with families, and listening to all the small complaints that never make it into official surveys: the cost of fertilizer, the anxiety of crop failures, the feeling that rural work is invisible until a crisis hits.
We decided early that if we were going to work with this tree, we would try to work with as much of it as possible. Oil, coconut sugar, chips, chocolates, crafts from shell, brushes from coir - each coconut product would be a way of holding on to more value, creating more types of work, and reducing waste.
An “all coconut” brand was not a branding trick. It was a discipline. It forced us to ask, every time, whether we were honouring the tree, the soil and the people, or just trying to chase the next trend.
What actually happened at Davos - beyond one paragraph of news
A long trip, a short train ride and a decision
The article in The New Indian Express mentions something that sounds almost casual: we were in Europe, visiting family in a town not too far from Davos, and someone suggested, "Why don’t you go?"
On paper it looks simple. In real life it meant asking ourselves whether we were ready to carry our work into a space we had only ever seen on screens. We did not have a large delegation or a heavy marketing budget. We had a suitcase, some samples, and a belief that the conversations happening there about climate, agriculture and livelihoods needed more voices from the ground.
The train ride itself was quiet. The real noise was in our heads: Who are we to walk into those rooms? Will anyone care about a small rural coconut brand when the agenda is full of global crises.
Walking into rooms full of ministers, CEOs and policy makers with coconut chips
Davos is often described as a "village of leaders" for that one week. For us, it felt like walking into a very dense corridor where ideas, egos and opportunities are all jostling for space.
We did not take a podium. We took what we know best: coconut chips, small treats made with coconut sugar, and stories from the farmers and women’s collectives back home.
Handing someone a packet of snacks in a place like that is not about saying, "Please buy this." It is about opening a door. People would take a bite, nod at the taste, and then ask where it was made, who made it, and why we chose this path.
In those few minutes, a coconut product became an excuse to talk about droughts, soil health, fair pricing and the reality of running a small rural enterprise in a volatile world.
The Let’s Go Coconuts moment - why that paragraph matters to us
Being seen as more than just snacks
When we later read the "Let’s Go Coconuts" section, what struck us was how the reporter had connected dots that often get lost.
In a short space, she mentioned that these coconut products were linked to a women led collective, that rural artisans were involved, and that the goal was not only taste but also empowerment and sustainability.
For a long time, we have tried to explain that our work is not just about making things from coconuts. It is about who grows them, who processes them, and who gets to participate in the value created. Seeing that recognised on a page that reaches thousands of readers felt like a quiet validation that the nuance is landing.
Ananya Birla, ministers and a packet that was paid for...
One detail in the story has stayed with us. In the middle of all the introductions and handshakes, someone described our coconut chips to Ananya Birla as “awesome” and handed her a packet. The natural instinct, in such settings, is to treat it as a free sample.
Instead, she took out her wallet and paid for it.
It is a small gesture in a place where budgets run into millions, but it mattered to us. It meant the coconut product was being treated first as something of value, not just as a prop in a networking moment. Later, when she shared our work on her social platforms, it expanded the story further, but that first act of paying for the packet is what we remember most.
The real work we tried to do in those corridors
Talking about climate and farmers when everyone else talks about markets
When you are in rooms where people discuss trillions of dollars and multi country deals, it can feel almost naive to bring up rainfall patterns, input costs or farmer suicides.
But every time someone asked about what we do, we tried to gently pull the conversation back to the ground. We spoke about how coconut farmers are dealing with changing weather, how a bad year can wipe out savings, how rising costs and unstable prices make planning almost impossible.
We spoke about how choosing, paying for and valuing coconut products that are made closer to the farm can create slightly more stable local loops of income. We did not pretend that one brand can fix systemic problems, but we also did not pretend that these problems are separate from the glossy world of global forums.
Women led collectives, artisans and what fair pricing looks like in practice
It is easy to put the words "women empowerment" and "artisan made" on a label. It is harder to live with them day after day.
In Davos, when people asked about our team, we talked about the women who roast, fry, pack and finish many of our products, about how predictable orders and fair pricing change their ability to plan for their families.
We talked about the artisans who turn discarded coconut shells into bowls, lamps and small objects that now sit on desks far from the trees they came from. We talked about why we refuse to bargain them down to unsustainable rates, even when margins are tight.
Those discussions were not always glamorous, but they were honest. And that honesty is what we saw reflected in the way the new Indian express chose to frame our story.
One coconut, many rooms - what our products said when we were not there
What a bag of coconut chips said at a networking break
We like to imagine that, somewhere in those busy days, someone picked up a bag of coconut chips from a table, read the small print and paused for a moment.
Maybe they noticed the town name. Maybe they noticed a line about farmer networks or women’s collectives. Maybe, just for a second, they connected the crunch in their mouth to a farm that depends on the next good monsoon.
In that sense, the coconut product was doing the work for us. It was standing in the room when we had moved on to another conversation.
What a coconut sugar chocolate whispered to a finance person
Imagine a chocolate truffle made with coconut sugar being passed around in a circle where everyone usually talks on balance sheets and valuations.
Somebody bites into it and asks, half jokingly, what makes it special. The real answer sits under the surface: it is about moving from selling raw nuts to selling finished, thoughtfully designed goods; about creating local processing jobs; about building resilience into a fragile rural economy.
For that moment, the chocolate is a case study in value addition, circular use of resources and risk spreading, even if the person eating it never uses those exact words.
What a coconut shell craft put on a desk
Later, when someone takes a coconut shell bowl or lamp back to their hotel room or office, it becomes more than decor.
Every time they drop keys into that bowl or switch on that lamp, they are touching a piece of a tree that might have otherwise been discarded. They are touching hours of work by an artisan who has learned to turn waste into beauty.
That object keeps reminding them, quietly and repeatedly, that agriculture, craft and climate are not abstract topics. They are literally in their hands.
What we learned about storytelling from the newspaper coverage
How a journalist compressed our work into a few sentences
When we read the way our journey was described in The New Indian Express, we were struck by how carefully those sentences had been built.
In very little space, the article managed to mention origins in Arsikere, the farmer centric and women led nature of the work, the use of zero waste practices, and the decision to turn a family visit into an opportunity to carry rural voices into a global forum.
It reminded us that good storytelling from the outside can sometimes be more precise than the way we talk about ourselves. It also raised the bar for how honestly and clearly we need to communicate on our own website and packaging.
Why external validation matters to small rural brands
Press coverage is not the goal of our work, but it does something very specific that we cannot do alone.
It gives farmers, workers and their families something they can hold up and say, “Look, this is real. Someone far away has seen what we are doing.” It gives new customers a reason to pause and trust that the claims on our labels are not invented last minute.
For a small rural brand, that kind of validation is not about ego. It is about building enough credibility that we can keep going without constantly justifying our existence.
What comes after Davos - and after this article
Bringing global conversations back home
The true test of any big event is what you do with it after you return.
For us, the challenge now is to take everything we heard and saw in those halls and translate it into slow, patient work at home. That means improving our own farming practices, investing in better processes, being stricter about waste, and staying alert to how climate shifts are affecting our partner farms.
It also means continuing to refine our range of coconut products so that they are genuinely useful and joyful in everyday Indian homes, not just impressive in curated gift boxes.
A quiet promise to the people behind our work
To the farmers, women and artisans who trusted us long before any newspaper wrote our name, the unspoken promise is simple: we will not treat this moment as a finish line.
We will absorb the encouragement that comes from seeing Tengin in The New Indian Express, but we will measure our success by something more ordinary and more important: how consistently we can pay fairly, how well we can protect the soil and trees we depend on, and how honestly we can continue to talk about both our successes and our limits.
Conclusion - why this story is bigger than one article
In the end, this is not a story about a brand getting a mention in a national daily. It is a story about a tree, a town and a set of people who refused to accept that their work would always remain invisible.
From Arsikere to Davos, from the first batch of oil to the first coconut product handed over in a crowded corridor, the journey has been full of uncertainty. What The New Indian Express did, with that small "Let’s Go Coconuts" section, was to freeze one tiny moment on that path so that others could see it.
If you are reading this, you are already part of the next chapter. Every time you pause to ask where something comes from, who made it and what story it carries, you are helping build a world in which small, honest, farmer linked work has a chance to stand beside the biggest conversations.
For us, that is worth far more than a single headline.