Costa Coffee, the Whitbread-owned chain, has opened its 100th site in India and said it now plans to open up to 50 new units a year in the country going forward.
The group, which opened its 100th site in partnership with Devyani International Limited in Mumbai, plans to double that number over the next 24 month as it eventually looks to become an “eight-city operation in five years time”.
Costa Coffee managing director for Europe, Middle East and India, Andy Marshall told The India Express: “Our plan is very much to move into markets when the customer is ready for it. You can choose to go ahead of the market and say we are pan-India, but the market has to be ready. You see that happening in the top 10 cities and therefore we want to be there. But the other cities will come later.
“We have a vision to open about 50 shops a year from now on. If more is available then, of course, we will take up that opportunity. We will focus on key top five cities and make sure our brand establishes itself in those cities and then we will look at the next tier cities.
Marshall said that the group’s expansion in India, which started in 2005, had been slow up to this point due to prohibitively high rents and the absence of a coffee culture in India.
He said: “The biggest challenge here is the rentals. We would like to put more coffee shops here but rents in parts of Mumbai and Delhi are higher than that of London or New York. Therefore, a big challenge for us is in the way property prices move here.”
Earlier this year, Starbucks unveiled plans to open its first sites in India through a 50-50 joint venture with Tata Global Beverages, as part of an initial investment of 4bn rupees ($80m) in the country. The sites will be developed in cities across the country, beginning this autumn with stores in Delhi and Mumbai.
