Daughters of ex IIT professor offer delicious gut-friendly kombuchas.

◊ By Bhumika K

Visit ORGANIC SHOP by Pure & Eco India

If the word ‘kombucha’ conjures up too much of a healthy but unpalatable and fermented image for you, would you still say the same if it came in flavours like Pear & Honey, Jasmine, Kokum, Himalayan Plum, Blueberry & Lavender? With 13 flavours on offer, Atmosphere’s latest is a cola-flavoured kombucha called Kolala.

The kombucha brand was established in March 2018 by sisters Rebekah Sood and Ariella Blank. Operating from in South Delhi, Atmosphere is fast becoming one of the preferred kombuchas in the country.

The Blank sisters were born to American parents, but grew up in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand. Their father was a professor at IIT (Kanpur and Kharagpur) and came to settle permanently in India. Their mother was a very health conscious sportsperson and so the girls grew up eating healthy and were accustomed to having a lot of natural non-processed foods at home.

The Blank sisters have been immersed in very interesting and intertwined work before they started Atmosphere— Rebekah started Fab Café, the in-store café brand by Fabindia. Ariella, was a nutritionist with Organic India and then set up her own nutritional therapy practice.

“Ariella found that a lot of her clients had gut bacterial imbalance issues. But there was nothing in the market to recommend to them as a solution. So she started making kombuchas for them,” says Rebekah. The kombuchas started getting such rave reviews, they soon found their way to the Fab Café menu. They found that it was well received there too, and there was a huge potential market for kombuchas. “There was just a need for probiotics – fresh, live, living healthy probiotics,” says Rebekah. In a few months they launched Atmosphere.

“Kombucha is a sparkling probiotic tea. The way we make it, it’s very palatable. It’s a healthy alternative to soda or tonic water. It doesn’t necessarily taste fermented or sour. I can claim that we make the tastiest kombucha in India,” says Rebekah. For the uninitiated, it is a fresh, live probiotic drink that is said to help restore gut health, calm your digestion, and boost immunity.

The kombuchas are “as organic as we can make them,” says Rebekah, though they are not essentially branded as ‘organic’. Ingredients like organic blueberry are not available for sourcing in India, making it a challenge to go totally organic. A SCOBY (Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast) is added to a substrate of sweet tea and fermented for a week to 10 days. “During this time the bacteria and yeast take in the sugar and caffeine from the tea, reproduce and fill the liquid with lots of probiotic cultures. The plain kombucha is then infused with fruits and herbs to create our tasty and fizzy brews,” Rebekah explains the kombucha-making process. The unopened kombuchas have a four-month shelf life, with refrigeration. 

They also make a grapefruit water-based kefir (otherwise kefirs are usually milk-based). A very bubbly and low-sugar drink, kefirs usually contain a greater number of good bacterial strains than a kombucha.

They sell about 10,000 bottles of kombucha a month through cafés in Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata and Goa. A 210 ml bottle sells for Rs. 220 in retail stores. Rebekah says the company is growing at 100% a year. The kombuchas can be ordered online from atmospherestudio.in. But they deliver in Delhi NCR and Jaipur only for now.

The Covid 19 pandemic didn’t really affect them much, says Rebekah because they are a very local company. But it was then that they started a whole lot of online health workshops – like the gut reset workshop, a salad-a-day workshop, etc.

They are expanding to include several other products as well, keeping their core focus as “better gut health”. They have been working with artisanal pasta brand Donna Pastaia to create a recipe for a grain-free, gluten-free, low carb pasta made with almond flour (Atmosphere doesn’t manufacture it).

Atmosphere also makes 8 flavours of cheesecakes with nut butters, roasted nuts, coconut yoghurt and fresh fruit. The cheesecakes are sugar-free, gluten-free, dairy-free and a 100% vegan. And in keeping with their philosophy, they’re also rich in probiotics and prebiotics to feed the gut with good bacteria.

In another two months, they will be launching a whole new range of products in the food space that are gluten-free, dairy-free and sugar-free, shares Rebekah.