As global café chain Starbucks makes definite strides towards the Indian market, Café Coffee Day, the home-grown leader, has started rolling up its sleeves for the big fight.
On Thursday, it launched Café Moments, a pre-paid card usable at all CCD outlets.
Besides this, it has re-engineered its food menu and is making strong overtures towards its customers digitally, upping engagement with the brand.
Customers can load and top up their Café Moments cards with denominations ranging from Rs 100-5,001. Apart from gifting, the card offers convenience of use, periodic benefits like special deals on certain deals, bill discounts from 5 per cent to 10 per cent depending on the denomination on the card.
Mr K. Ramakrishnan, the company's President, Marketing, is unperturbed about Starbucks' entry. “We would worry if we were in a mature market. In India, the café business is far from mature and offers huge opportunities for growth.”
All the existing café chains (organised and unorganised) put together do not have more than 3,000 outlets in the country and the market capacity is close to 7,000 outlets.
Coffee drinking statistics also point out to growth opportunities.
India has a per capita coffee consumption of 82 gms, while the US has 4 kgs and Brazil 4.8 kgs.
From the point of towns, all café brands together have not crossed more than 200 towns and India has 5,900 towns. All huge positives for any café chain.
Mr Ramakrishnan insists there will be no change to CCD's positioning of a mass value brand, largely targeting the youth.
On the other hand, the 1,270-strong chain would have an edge over global players in terms of understanding the DNA of the market.
“We are a fully integrated chain owning estates, do our own roasting and grinding and own cafes.”
Is the company worried about head hunters targeting CCD's 9,500 employees who would be readymade talent for Starbucks?
“CCD provides people an empowered career and a quick path to move up and is essentially entrepreneurial in nature,” which he says would make the 16-year-old coffee chain a preferred employer.