India is traditionally a tea-drinking country. But, it is now gaining a new
taste for coffee. This has led international coffee companies to consider
opening businesses in the huge market. Local business people are also hoping to
profit from the country's tea-drinking habits. They want to open new stores that
offer tea.
It is ten thirty in the morning in India. Two cafes are within
meters of each other, near a college in New Delhi. And they are selling a lot of
tea. Their main customers are undergraduate students.
In the past ten years,
cafes have become increasingly popular in India. The country's huge young
population has quickly taken to the coffee culture.
Coffee stores have spread
from major cities like New Delhi and Mumbai to smaller towns. Coffee use has
doubled in the last ten years. It is the success of this market that has gained
the attention of companies like the American-based coffee chain Starbucks. The
company will open its first store in India later this year. Other companies like
Lavazza and Costa Coffee are already there.
The head of India Coffee Trust,
Anil Kumar Bhandari, praises Starbucks's decision. He said cafes in India have
become central to the lifestyle of the young, middle-class as incomes grow and
global trends gain popularity.
Yet, the growth of coffee will not to reduce
the popularity of tea. Indians drink eight times more tea than coffee. They have
been drinking tea for more than one hundred and fifty years. India is one of the
world's biggest producers of tea, which is known locally as "chai." Outside
homes and offices, it is mostly sold by small businesses on the street.
That
is what businessmen like Amuleek Singh Bijral, who once was a supplier,
hopes to change. The thirty-six-year-old graduated from Harvard University in
Cambridge, Massachusetts.
He has opened a tea store called Chai Point in
India's information technology section in Bangalore. In less than a year,
fourteen Chai Points have opened in the city.
Business experts note that half
of India's population of over one billion is under the age of twenty-five. They
say both cafés and tea places will find room to grow.
