The Kochi Heritage Project
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The Kochi Heritage Project
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Meet the Team

The Kochi Heritage Project is a small team with an outsized obsession with one city. Here's who's behind it.

Johann Binny Kuruvilla

Founder & Chief Storyteller

I’ve always believed that the most important stories are the ones that don’t have monuments built for them.


Kochi is full of those stories. The pepper trader who changed the course of global commerce. The tombstone no one can read anymore. The cashew that arrived on a Portuguese ship and became Kerala’s own. I started The Kochi Heritage Project in 2018 because I wanted to find those stories, verify them, and then take people to exactly the spot where they happened.


Seven years later, TKHP has walked with over 2,500 guests, designed 23+ experiences, and is still finding new threads in the same streets. The city keeps giving. 


I’m a researcher by temperament, a storyteller by practice. I read archival records, translate colonial inscriptions, and spend an embarrassing amount of time with old books. Everything I find ends up in a walk.


If you’ve ever stood in front of a heritage building and felt like the plaque wasn’t telling you the whole story — come walk with us.

Persis Lilliyoose

Director & CFO


Persis keeps TKHP running — which, for a social enterprise that operates across multiple experiences, community partnerships, and institutional programs, is no small thing. She brings an MBA in Finance, experience from Big Four firms, and a strategic clarity that turns creative ambition into something sustainable.


She came to Kochi from Trivandrum, and to heritage through TKHP. She now knows more about Fort Kochi's colonial infrastructure than most people who were born here.

Impu Charan

Creative Consultant


Impu is a Bangalorean who moved to Fort Kochi and made it home. Wanting to give something back to a city that had been so kind to her, she began a series of long conversations with our founder, Johann. Those conversations became her role as our Creative Consultant, helping build out the brand with the same care.


An architecture graduate of WCFA, Mysore, Impu practises from Kochi through her own firm, Paper and Space by Impu, working on renovations, landscaping, experience centres and Airbnbs. She also works in film as an assistant art director.

We think that's exactly what it takes.

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The Kochi Heritage Project | Timeless Experiences

Kochi, Kerala, India

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