We are redefining what cacao is worth. From the farmers growing it in rural Thailand to the chocolate bar on your table, we bring together technology, sustainability, and culture to reinvent the Thai cacao supply chain.
de'Finnitive Cacao is an organisation built around one uncomfortable truth: the global cacao supply chain has failed the people at the bottom of it for too long.
Smallholder farmers produce 80–90% of the world's cacao. They earn 3–6% of the final chocolate value. In Ghana, hundreds of thousands of those farmers earn less than 2 USD a day despite powering a 120 billion dollar industry. In Thailand, the story is different but familiar. Cacao is a relatively new crop here, emerging only around five years ago. Farmers face low incomes, limited knowledge, and almost no access to sustainable practices.
We are not here to talk about that problem. We are here to fix it.
Through three interconnected projects, we attack the supply chain from every angle: the technology that improves the beans, the brand that pays fairly for them, and the circular system that makes sure nothing from the harvest goes to waste.
Of the world's cacao is grown by smallholder farmers
Of the final chocolate value those farmers actually earn
Global cacao industry value
Since Thai cacao farming seriously began
Each one tackles a different part of the same broken system. Together they create a cacao ecosystem where farmers earn more, nothing goes to waste, and every consumer knows exactly where their chocolate came from.
The world's first data-driven cacao fermentation optimiser. An affordable, portable IoT device that removes the barriers to quality fermentation entirely, making it easy and accessible for every farmer.
Learn more → 02 / 03
Thailand's first fully traceable bean-to-bar chocolate brand. Every bar comes with a QR code linking to its fermentation data. 73% cacao, 27% sugar, nothing else.
Learn more → 03 / 03
Cacao pod husks turned into biodegradable leather-like material, then handcrafted by Thai artisans into beautiful goods. The 70% of the fruit everyone else throws away.
Learn more →That is what a real circular economy looks like. GOcacao improves the beans, de'Finnitive Chocolates pays fairly for them, and de'Finnitive Pods recovers the 70% of the fruit that would have otherwise been thrown on the ground.
Every step puts more value in the hands of the farmers and communities that make it all possible.
Farmer harvests pods, sells to de'Finnitive at 25%+ above market
GOcacao monitors in real time across 6 Thai regions
Pod husks sold to leather cooperative, second income for farmers
Beans become traceable 73% dark bars with QR fermentation data
Cacao waste becomes handmade artisan goods sold globally
Naravid Tejavanija
It started at Kad KoKoa, one of Thailand's leading bean-to-bar producers, where I got my first real look at what goes into making chocolate from scratch. The farms, the fermentation, the way a batch of beans transforms over 96 hours into something with genuine depth and complexity.
But the more I learned, the more one thing kept bothering me. The farmers doing the hardest work in the entire chain were capturing almost none of the value. Smallholder farmers grow 80–90% of the world's cacao and take home 3–6% of what it is worth. No data, no leverage, no way to prove the quality of what they had grown.
So I built GOcacao, the world's first data-driven cacao fermentation optimiser. It costs $100. Industry alternatives cost $5,000. It uses a thermokinetic algorithm to read what is happening inside the ferment in real time, and tells farmers exactly when to act. It has now been deployed across 6 regions in Thailand, processed over 2 tonnes of cacao, and helped farmers earn 2x the standard Fairtrade price.
Then I started de'Finnitive Chocolates, a bean-to-bar brand that sources directly from those farms and publishes the fermentation data behind every single batch. 73% cacao, 27% sugar, nothing else, and a QR code on every wrapper so you can see exactly how your bar was made.
Then I noticed we were still throwing away 70% of the fruit. So de'Finnitive Pods converts cacao pod husks into biodegradable leather, handcrafted by Thai artisans into products that create a second income stream for the same farmers.
That is how a curiosity about chocolate turned into three companies.