Siddhartha was the Howard Schultz of India

Harish Bijoor

IN the history of modern India, there are seldom such brands that captivate the imagination of all. Café Coffee Day, put together by VG Siddhartha, is one such. It had the young and the young at heart equally enchanted. 

With 1,750 outlets dotting the entire country (covering big cities and small towns alike), CCD has become the healthy and comfortable substitute to the nukkad of our lives. Each of these air-conditioned nukkads offer a standard fare of coffee and eats. And with it, some music, a television set to peer at if you are alone and a clean toilet to boot. And if you want to carry something on the go, that is available as well. And further still, if you so desire, you could pick mugs and coffee percolators and coffee powder to make it all at home too.

CCD, in many ways, taught this nation to drink coffee. It made ‘cappuccino’ the hero and the ‘tropical iceberg’ your cold companion on a hot day. This was a place where a crunchy samosa could marry peri-peri wedges at your table, and the mug of coffee that lasted and lasted got you away into a space of your own.

Ask anyone in your family to begin with. Have you been to a CCD? Do you have fond memories of the place? Did you meet your boyfriend there? Did you bond with your girlfriend out there, battling all those issues that any relationship is bound to churn up on its route to fruition? Did you attend an interview at a CCD? Did you sell a plot at a CCD? I can go on and on. Just like Maggi, over the last two decades, CCD has created memories of its own, with people finding a place where indeed “a lot can happen over coffee”.

And guess what? This was one brand conceptualised and put together from the confines of a poky little office space in Raheja Chambers on Museum Road in good old Bangalore. In fact, if I look deeper still, the brand was born in a brilliant mind in that poky little space, with a vision that packed clarity and purpose. And that mind was the mind of VG Siddhartha, the uncrowned coffee king of India for sure.

What is brand CCD all about then?

It is a ‘Made in India’ offering. It is all about reasonable price. It is all about the “third place” where youngsters could hang out. The “first place” was home, the “second place” was college. And guess what, at both these places, one wore masks. And CCD turned out to be a place where you could walk in without a mask, and walk out without one as well.

Over a period of time, CCD has emerged as a stress-buster, as I said, a nukkad of your own wherever you go. It emerged as a true brand that is something to everybody. To someone it is coffee. To someone else it is that frittata omlette which you don’t get anywhere else. To your mom it is the loo on the highway and to the real-estate broker, it is an office. This sure is a brand that packs a lot in it, and therefore it is what it is.

Imagine the brand challenge as well. Keeping 1,750 toilets clean through the day. Making that exact cup of latte in 1,750 locations with that exact coffee emoji on each one of them. Keeping 1,750 outlets air-conditioned at optimal levels of comfort. Keeping every table clean across 1,750 locations through the tough working day. And that tells the complexity of the brand on offer. A CCD is not made in a centralised factory and dispatched to various centres to play out a working day. Every outlet is custom-made, custom-fitted and same service is dished out at every location to match the standards set by the company that runs this brand.

There are two types of brands then. There is the product brand made at the factory and there is the service brand that depends on what happens in Rohtak, Panipat and Chandigarh. Every day. CCD is this kind of a service brand. The value of this brand is exactly this then: The ability to run a common business across 1,750 hubs in the country, and shut each shop at night with the thought that things have gone fine. An art, a science and philosophy, all its own…

VG Siddhartha chose to embrace this art, science and philosophy to make CCD the ubiquitous brand it is today. I would, therefore, unhesitating call him the Howard Schultz of India. 

Siddhartha, you touched the lives of many with your brand, and their blessings are scattered all around today for all to see.

— The writer is a brand expert