Starbucks opens 100th store as it completes 5 years in India

The American coffee company Starbucks has opened its 100th store in Mumbai to mark its 5th year of selling coffee in India.

The 100th store is located in Mumbai—the same city where Starbucks had opened its first store back in 2012. With the store in Mumbai’s Horniman Circle, the global coffee chain entered India in a joint venture with Tata Global Beverages Ltd.

On its 5-year India anniversary, the company is focused on growth and wants to open three stores in Kolkata in 2018, Tata Starbucks Private Limited said in a press release.

The coffee chain currently operates in six cities in India--Mumbai, Pune, Hyderabad, Chennai, Delhi and Bangalore.

Even as the 40-year old Seattle-based company aggressively pushes for international expansion, the number of Starbucks stores worldwide doubled in the last decade.

As of 2016, they had 25,085 stores across the world – that is more than number of KFC stores on earth while the coffee chain catches up with McDonalds which has 36,899 stores.

According to Millward Brown market research firm, Starbucks is the second most valuable fast food brand in the world right now. Its brand valuation stands at USD 44.23 billion in 2017.

The company plans to double the number of partners, who are actually its employees, to 3,000 in the next five year while increasing proportion of women in the workforce to 40 percent in India.

Starbucks will be offering all tall size beverages at Rs 100 per cup on November 28 across all its Indian outlets as part of its celebratory initiatives.