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.

ANIL KUMAR BHANDARI: “They should have been here before… Almost any café chain which has a reasonable quality with its service, ambiance and food, and coffee first, will succeed in this country. Because, you know, look at the young population, (it) is growing and they are all taking to it like ducks to water.”

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 hope 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.