With a country obsessed with tea, if there is one brand which has made Coffee omnipresent across Indian cities and available to masses, it is Café Coffee Day (CCD). Whether it is an important corporate meeting or a vibrant place for teenagers to hang out, CCD is everyone’s first choice, thanks to VG Siddhartha. It has made itself a brand with more than 2,000 outlets worldwide.
Let us know more about the growth story of the now omnipresent brand and the man behind its Success!
VG Siddhartha, the man who changed the Coffee Culture of India
VG Siddhartha is the proud Founder & Owner of Cafe Coffee Day. He was born into a family of coffee plantation owners from the Chikmagalur district of Karnataka, who today, have been in the industry for more than 140 years.
After his Masters, he went to Mumbai and joined J M Financial Services as a management intern on the Indian Stock Market, leaving out his family business of growing coffee. After two years, he returned to Bangalore to look after the family business. But he was not happy with the size of their ambition. He worked hard to expand the business and make it big.
Eventually, the cultivation grew from a few hundred acres to a few thousand acres because of his desire to increase the cultivation. But because of the inconsistent coffee prices, the traditional growers got fed up and started selling out their business to Siddhartha. The Government policies & the soaring high import and export duties made it even more difficult for Indian Coffee Planters, to keep low prices or to venture out into the International coffee cartel.
image source: cafe coffee day
VG Siddhartha headed to New Delhi, to convince the union government to end their monopoly over coffee and returned successfully. As a result, the highly inflated taxes on coffee trade were drastically cut down and the dream of CCDs was born.
He understood the basics of the coffee business and the conclusions were shocking. The world grows around 120 million bags of coffee bean every year which costs around $7 billion approximately. But when the same bean is retailed as a cup of coffee the value becomes $100 billion. Siddhartha wanted to pursue the $100 billion mark. He called his team and discussed with them, his idea of retailing a cup of coffee.
He briefed his management team that he wanted to put up cafés across India. Within a budget of Rs.1.5 Cr; he told them to build a nice concept store to attract young audiences to his cafe, he decided to make it a Cyber Cafe with Coffee and Internet together.
This idea was even more bankable because, those days the Internet was still a luxury product limited only to the riches, posh places, and cafes.
image source: cafe coffee day
Coffee Day, The Brand
Today, CCD has expanded through many cities in India joining new stores with more than 1500 cafes open across the nation by 2018. It has also expanded outside India with its outlets in Austria (Vienna), Czech Republic, Malaysia, Egypt, and Nepal.
The company is known for being vertically integrated to cut costs: from owning the plantations, growing the coffee, making the coffee machines] to making the furniture for the outlets
Additionally, Cafe Coffee Day also holds multiple divisions which include:
- Coffee Day Fresh ‘n’ Ground, which owns 450 coffee bean and powder retail outlets
- Coffee Day Square, a high-level coffee bar in Bangalore, Chennai, Mumbai, New Delhi
- Coffee Day Xpress, which runs 900 plus Coffee Day kiosks
- Coffee Day Beverages, which runs over 50,000 vending machines
- Coffee Day Exports, its exporting wing
- Coffee Day Perfect, its fast-moving consumer goods packaged coffee division
- Coffee Day B2C Plant, Coffee vending machine manufacturing division
CCD seeks valuation from Coca-Cola, demands between ₹8k to ₹10k crore
