Group shot of the dishes at Kala Cafe (Photo by arrangement)

What began as Hema Sushmitha’s desire to find trustworthy food for her daughter grew into a family farm in Nellore and, eventually, Kala Café in Hyderabad. Her idea is to let people enjoy the foods they love, from familiar Indian flavours to global favourites, using ingredients she can trust.

When Hema Sushmitha’s daughter Aishwarya was born in 2003, a question began to occupy her mind: what exactly was her child eating?

Coming from an agricultural background, Sushmitha decided to take matters into her own hands. She bought a cow to ensure a supply of clean milk for her daughter. Soon, the effort extended to growing leafy vegetables in a kitchen garden. Then came two acres of farmland, where she began cultivating regional fruits, pulses, peanuts for oil, rice and sesame.

What began as an attempt to provide for her own family gradually grew into something larger. Friends began asking for the produce, and the quantities increased. Over the years, the family developed its farming operations and eventually established Pernati Naturals, which now supplies produce and food products to consumers.

Today, the family’s farming operations span around 350 acres, with more than 300 native-breed cows. The business also includes stores in Nellore and Hyderabad. But for Sushmitha, the original motivation remains closely tied to the reason she began farming in the first place.

Hema Sushmitha Reddy

“Kala is a dream I have carried for many years. When I look back at my childhood, we never counted calories, carbohydrates, proteins or fats before eating. We simply ate when we were hungry. Our mothers and grandmothers cooked with ingredients that largely came from our own fields and kitchens. We ate our food wholeheartedly, without constantly worrying about whether it was good for us,” she says.

That memory of food and the trust associated with it shaped her thinking when she became a mother. She wanted her daughter to enjoy the food she liked, including Western dishes, without having to compromise on the ingredients used to prepare them.

“I wanted to recreate that trust in food for her and wanted her to be able to enjoy the foods she loved, whether Indian or inspired by cuisines from around the world, but made with ingredients that I could trust. That thought eventually became Kala Café. What began as a mother’s dream for her child has now become a dream I want to share with everyone who walks into Kala,” she says.


Located in Kokapet, Hyderabad, Kala Café is an extension of that idea. Situated one floor above the Pernati Naturals store, it brings the family’s produce into a café setting, where the emphasis is on familiar, enjoyable food prepared with ingredients the family knows.

For Sushmitha, eating well should not mean limiting oneself to a narrow selection of dishes. She wanted to challenge the assumption that food made with organically grown ingredients must necessarily be austere or restricted to millets and traditional preparations.

Her daughter’s preference for Western food helped shape that thinking. If children and young adults enjoy burgers, fries, sandwiches and other café favourites, Sushmitha believes there is room to rethink the ingredients without taking away the pleasure of eating them.

That is where chef Shantanu Katakam comes in. At Kala Cafe, he works with regional ingredients and familiar flavours, bringing them into dishes that borrow from different cuisines while retaining an Indian touch.

The Gongura Melt is one example. Mozzarella and gongura chutney come together on sourdough toast, combining a healthy local leafy green with a café-style preparation. Sweet potato fries, meanwhile, are double-cooked, dusted with house-made gunpowder and served with piri-piri mayonnaise.

Shantanu says the idea is not simply to reproduce dishes from elsewhere, but to adapt them using ingredients and flavours he enjoys working with. His approach also extends to sauces and accompaniments.


“Even the mayonnaise, initially we were doing a store-bought mayonnaise and doing our own seasoning. Then we came up with a recipe where we use semi-frozen milk, mustard oil to emulsify and make a base, mayonnaise without eggs. And then we add that to different seasonings and sauces,” he explains.

Regional ingredients also find their way into dishes that might otherwise follow a more conventional format. The chef uses curry leaf powder and moringa powder to bring a South Indian flavour to an eggplant-based sauce inspired by baba ganoush. The menu also includes country chicken croquettes served with flatbread, tzatziki, tomato chutney and pickled radish, as well as a congee and curry preparation built around garlic congee with a choice of spiced lamb or yam curry.

The point is to make these ingredients part of everyday eating rather than treat them as an exception. A café visit, in this approach, need not mean leaving behind the flavours and produce that are common to the region.


At Kala Cafe, the connection between the person preparing the food and the person eating it is central to the idea. Sushmitha’s concern about what reached her daughter’s plate has become a broader commitment to the people who walk into the café. Shantanu, meanwhile, brings his own curiosity and memories into the kitchen, looking for ways to give familiar ingredients a different expression.

The café’s setting follows a similar intention. Designed by architect Praharsh Reddy of Studio Parti, the space uses natural light, ventilation, greenery and verandah-style seating to evoke the ease of a home rather than a formal restaurant. The café has seating for around 35 people.


‘Kala’ means dream in Telugu. For Sushmitha, it is a dream that began with a mother trying to make a better choice for her child, which eventually grew into a farm, a food business and now a café offering healthy eating options.

The ambition now is to make that sense of trust available to others, without asking them to give up the dishes they enjoy. It is an idea rooted in the belief that care for the people who eat the food should begin long before a dish reaches the table.

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