Cafe Coffee Day: Story Of India’s Largest Coffee Chain
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In 1996, Café Coffee Day was started by V.G. Siddhartha, in Bangalore. In 1979, when he was a college student, his aim was to become a communist leader! He never dreamt of becoming an entrepreneur.
Siddhartha was working as an analyst with JM Financial and Investment Consultancy when he first opened the cafe with assistance from familial wealth and 10,000 acres of coffee farms inherited from his parents. With an initial investment of Rs. 1.5 crores, V.G. Siddhartha opened the first CCD outlet in one of the busiest and poshest localities of Bangalore, Brigade Road.
Soon, the coffee brand started growing and now they have plantations at hundreds of places. Now the company gets its Dark Forest coffee beans from the Kathlekhan estate, known for growing single origin coffee beans, the Arabica and Robusta beans are obtained from the Kudregundi estate. Some famous ranches of the company are the Halasoor estate, Devdarshini estate, Kathlekhan estate, Bhadra estate, Girikhan farm and Kurkunmutty land.
One of the greatest thing about CCD is that it has maintained its good relations with people who send them coffee beans. Even after becoming a brand, the CCD group takes special care of the tribe that handpicks the coffee beans in the Kathlekhan estate. A school and a hospital are run by the estate for the people and free electricity is provided to all the homes over there.
“Out of 1.3 billion population, we are considering the market of around 30% of India,” Siddhartha once told a leading daily earlier. “So, according to us, there is a mind-boggling opportunity in big cities, small cities, and even the highways,” he added.
With more than 1800 cafes spread across 209 cities across India, CCD, as the chain is widely known and it competes with the likes of Starbucks and Barista in Asia’s third-largest economy. Outside India, it has outlets in Austria, the Czech Republic and Malaysia. In 2015, CCD had revenue of 13.26 billion INR (US$210 million).
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