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Starbucks goes for Indian tastes and tech
The coffee giant partners with Tata Communications to roll out free WiFi and office LAN across all Indian stores; adds an Indian arabica coffee to its menu.
Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan joins in a selfie with green apron partners in an Indian outlet. / Photo: Starbucks
Elaichi Mewa croissant? Yes. Tandoori Paneer Roll? We can do that. South Indian filter coffee? Absolutely! Ditto for masala chai.
Ever since it opened its first outlet in Mumbai’s Horniman Circle in 2012, global retail coffee king Starbucks, and its 50:50 India partner, Tata Consumer Products have been nothing if not eclectic in the offered range of beverages and eats.
The India-based Starbucks stores, cannily catered to local and regional tastes whether it is the south’s preference for filter coffee as maami makes it, and in smaller lota -sized helpings -- or that quintessential Parsi favourite, the Mewa cake in Mumbai and Pune.
The company quickly adapted its signature menus and jumbo-sized coffee doses to desi taste (and purse) even as it quickly ramped up to just under 400 stores in 54 cities and 4300 employees ( it prefers to call them partners).
On a visit to India earlier this month, the CEO of Starbucks, Pune (Maharashtra)-born, Laxman Narasimhan announced plans to grow the number of India-based stores to 1000 by 2028, to double the workforce to 8600 and enter more Tier 2 and Tier 3 towns.
A new Starbucks in India every three days
“Over the past 11 years, the India market has grown to become one of Starbucks’ fastest-growing markets in the world. With a growing middle class, we are proud to help cultivate the evolving coffee culture while honouring its rich heritage,” Narasimhan said.
He added, “With our trusted business partner, Tata, and our green apron partners, we are well-positioned to capture the limitless opportunities as we open one store every three days in India and further our aspiration to become truly global.”
To develop what Sunil D’Souza, CEO, Tata Consumer Products calls “India’s coffee culture” and to deepen the connection with customers, Starbucks will soon add an Indian arabica coffee to its range, under the name “Monsooned Malabar”. This will also reach the US market later in 2024.
From Indian taste to tech
Photo: Starbucks. / Tata Sons Chairman N.Chandrasekaran (left) with Starbucks CEO Laxman Narasimhan and a Starbucks-India partner earlier this month in India. With a strong Indian partner like the Tatas who are already part of the coffee ecosystem with a vast network of coffee plantations and their own branded retail coffee, Starbucks has also gone ‘desi’ when it comes to the key technologies installed in its India-based outlets.
In a project that started about two years ago, it turned to another Tata group company, Tata Communications to take on the responsibility of equipping all its India stores with free WiFi for its customers – a crucial USP – as well as the back-end communication infrastructure.
It made sound business sense to merge the two functions, says Vipin Gupta, chief technology officer at Starbucks India.
To combine the two personas, Abhishek Sharma, associate vice president (sales) at Tata Communications explains that they could bring together three of their home-brewed offerings: the managed WiFi service using the latest WiFi6 standard; the B2B messaging service and their own IZO SDWAN (Software Defined Wide Area Network). The solution also leveraged the Cisco-Meraki cloud controlled WiFi 6E routers.
This gave Starbucks the ability to build useful analytics into the free WiFi offering: who was in the store; how frequently do they come? How long have they been in the store?
The last Information is tactfully used after half an hour, to suggest with a text message to the customer that he or she might like to order a refill. It almost always works.
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