Coffee chains gear up for competition!

Nine months after it joined hands with Tata Global Beverages, Starbucks will serve its first cup in India by the end of this month. The coffee chain is looking to open 3 stores in Mumbai in November, and will be in Delhi by next year.

Obviously the competition is watching all this rather closely and gearing up for the iconic coffee brand’s launch. Twelve-year old market leader Cafe Coffee Day has just launched its first ever ad campaign and Costa Coffee has announced expansion plans. Animesh Das finds out how the Starbucks entry will impact the market. More on the show: A) Nine years after it was first introduced and four months after missing the last deadline, the first phase of TV digitisation is expected to be complete on October 31. The government claims that 82.6 lakh TV homes in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata will be digital by then and has been going all out to meet the deadline this time round. Pavni Mittal reports that Mumbai is leading the pack when it comes to being ready and Chennai is bringing up the rear. B) Facebook marked another milestone this week. It now has a billion monthly users. Coinciding with that, though not talking about it directly, the company has released its first ever ad campaign. Wieden + Kennedy Portland is the agency and the filmmaker is Alejandro Inarritu. Facebook is not planning to buy TV time for the commercial and is instead relying on the internet and its own social network to showcase the ad. It will run in 13 countries including India that is its 3rd largest market. C) AR Rahman was shooting last month in Mumbai for JBL, the American brand's first TV commercial. It will release in India during Diwali. Watch the videos.