Coffee by Di Bella Eyes India for Expansion

COFFEE BY Di Bella, an Australian Coffee company is evolving in the Indian market rapidly. Founded in 2002 by Phillip Di Bella in Australia, the brand has its global footprint across four countries, Australia, New Zealand, China and India. In India it has around 14 branches across the country. Coffee By Di Bella is targeting 25 stores per metro city and a 100 stores Pan-India within the next three to five years.

BW Hotelier spoke to Rahul Leekha, Director, Coffee By Di Bella to know more about the expansion plan. “As compared to Australia where the coffee industry is already developed, it is still growing in India. The Indian consumer today is well travelled, educated and appreciates honest product. With coffee chains such as Gloria Jeans, Costa Coffee, Bru world etc exiting or consolidating in the Indian market, it has left a big market share for us to fill in. We've flourished in this period with running highly profitable & sustainable stores and find it the right time to spread our foot print across the country”, he said.

Leekha has an experience with Hospitality and FMCG brands across India, Singapore, China, Australia and Middle East. Prior to this Leekha was running an advisory firm for multinational and international brands. According to Leekha, “Coffee By Di Bella was initially a client who was looking into entering the Indian market, we saw a gap in the coffee market which Coffee By Di Bella could fill in. We decided to join hands and have jointly been committed towards this market since”, he said.

To match the existing brand in India, Coffee By Di Bella has carved a niche for itself. Elaborating more on this, Leekha said, “We do not do any offline advertising rather than we invest everything in our product. 80 per cent of our footfall is repeat footfall as we focus highly on customer retention. However we do focus on social media and have seen instant ROI.”

Adding more to this he said, “We launch new & innovative products every quarter and have done some tie-ups with Tourism Victoria/Queensland government, Make in India, to launch new products which have gone viral.”

Sharing his views on the difficulties, Leekha concluded, “India is still learning about coffee brewing techniques, the main hurdle for us is to find the right talent/manpower which is very scarce. Our CBD training programme helps us tremendously to overcome this challenge. However, we've seen same store YOY growth of around 20 per cent and overall coffee consumption on the incline.”