Barista sets sight on international expansion: CEO Rajat Agrawal highlights Middle East and Maldives as key opportunities

The coffee industry is growing with pent-up demand. Every player is trying to cater to a certain level of wallet share. The industry needs more players to come in to fulfil the gap.

We have been able to get the right size of inventory in terms of growth and are the fastest-growing cafe over the last few years. Our pipeline is not deterred by any competition coming in and has created our niche in terms of positioning.

The idea is that we want to run a profitable enterprise rather than just adding numbers. We are also eyeing what kind of real estate we want to enter.

The competition is still focused on metro cities, we are way ahead of the inventory we carry today. Eventually, the game will be ten years from now when all the brands stand together in their journey. That would be the right comparison. 

The diner format was introduced by us in 2018 with the idea of having food in India as the food share is encouraging even in regular coffee shops that we operate, unlike Western countries where coffee is a big thing. 

In the last three years during the pandemic, we slowed down the growth of the diner. We have just started a new diner in Gurugram and have got encouraging results. The response to the diners is interesting and is selling almost 60 to 70 per cent of our sales in the format. 

We are very selective in terms of looking at the right set of locations. We want to play out well before we get into large-scale penetration in the format. The idea is in the next two-three years there will be 10 more diners under our belt.

The FMCG vertical saw an upsurge in demand in terms of house consumption during the coronavirus. We are largely working on categories in coffee and cookies segment as an early-stage investment into the FMCG strategy.

We got encouraging results and have touched 2,000-3,000 touchpoints in distribution with our products available across six states. We are looking at strategies in terms of creating more profit categories that will create a big portfolio under our belt. 

The idea is to have a larger level of inventory that will help the FMCG growth in a big way because we will be able to carry a larger shelf space.

Then is to create a larger level of distributor universe; as of now, we have been penetrating through general trade, but the focus is now shifting to the hyper-local, the online space and creating a larger space for the modern trade, which we have not started. 

We started with Amazon about seven to eight months back.The demand is high in terms of the coffee appetite as we have our instant coffee and other products listed. 

Going forward, we intend to build a platform that would contribute 10 to 15 per cent of our overall business in the next four to five years. 

We are looking at the Middle East as a big opportunity to grow in the next three years, we are already working on that. We are available in the Dubai market in the FMCG segment through our distributors and our product is available online and offline.

For the international agenda, we have signed up with an opportunity in Maldives. We will be slowly growing there in terms of looking at strategic partners and opportunities to grow our network. 

The idea is to build a strong portfolio with the next target countries for export.