EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

Indian consumer is a very interesting entity. The consumer in India is as heterogeneous as the country itself is. The urban consumer contrasts with the rural and the South Indian consumer with the North Indian. Further still, the consumer in the metros militates with his usage and habit patterns. The Indian consumer, is therefore very difficult to understand and very difficult to predict.
Tea and Coffee are the favourite drink in India especially tea. A quiet cafe revolution is sweeping urban India with the explosion of coffee bars. That is bad news for tea - still the favourite brew for a majority of Indians -which has been losing out to coffee in recent years.
India is one of the world's largest exporters of tea and one of its biggest consumers. However, it is coffee drinking which is increasingly becoming a statement of young and upwardly mobile Indians. Moreover, coffee bars, an unheard of concept until a couple of years ago, are suddenly big business. Coffee is slowly but surely substituting tea. There is also rise in the consumption of coffee. The specialty coffee movement has gained much of its momentum through the efforts of companies like Barista, Café Coffee Day and Starbucks. Coffee shops in India were pioneered by Barista coffee house followed by Café Coffee Day and Barista was opened in India in 1999.
In India CAFÉ COFFEE DAY and BARISTA are the most popular and well-known cafés. The college crowd rates them as one of the coolest hangouts. These companies sell similar product but their positioning and target audience are very different from each other. These players not only sell coffee and tea but also food and other merchandise items.
Despite of serving to different audience, these players compete with themselves. Each player fights for its own share of market. They try to differentiate themselves by the way of product or price