Di Bella Coffee Plan $5m Indian Investment

The Australian coffee chain Di Bella Coffee looks set to pump in around $5m in to their Indian operations in a bid to increase their presence in the country, reports in India suggest.

As well as this influx of revenue, the company is also set to open up a specialised Barista training centre in the country and could even introduce roasting hubs in some of its stores.

Electel, a Swiss-based company who operates the Di Bella licence outside of Australia, will oversee the venture and they seem pretty bullish about their chances of success.

“Our business model is different wherein each of our outlets [are] leased and we have revenue share agreements with the landlord. So we break even within a month of operation,” said Rahul Leekha, Electel’s director.

At the moment, Di Bella has ten outlets in India and plans to open a further seven branded coffee shops within the next couple of months.

The overall aim is to see the total number of stores rise to twenty-five inside a year as they look to take advantage of a changing retail climate and instigate a small-scale changing of the guard.

“The coffee landscape has changed drastically in India wherein we find opportunity to create our own nice as a lot of big players have shut up shop and found it difficult,” Leekha added.

Many big names have found the going tough in India before, with those brands already embedded into the fabric of the bustling metropolitan areas succeeding where newcomers have failed.

Interestingly, Di Bella could be chalked up as a failure in India up to this point as this investment is actually their second attempting at cracking the nut, so to speak. They split with their original partner last year after a less than successful start to life.