Starbucks Plans Faster India Expansion with 100 New Store Openings

Tata Starbucks, the 50-50 joint venture between SBUX and Tata Consumer Products, plans to add 50 to 100 new stores per year in India as the business moves toward sustained profitability. Tata Consumer Products Chairman N. Chandrasekaran disclosed the target at the company's 63rd annual general meeting, framing it as an acceleration of a longer-term ambition he described as potentially reaching 8,000 locations in the country.

The JV currently operates 502 outlets across 80 Indian cities and has set an interim milestone of 1,000 stores by 2028. The EBITDA-positive status reached in FY26 is a meaningful threshold: earlier expansion rounds were constrained by unit economics that made aggressive rollout difficult to justify. With that hurdle cleared, management now has the financial rationale to increase the pace of openings.

India represents one of the most contested opportunities in global coffee retail. Domestic chains including Cafe Coffee Day and Barista have built scale over decades, and a new wave of specialty-coffee operators has grown rapidly in urban markets. Tata Starbucks competes at the premium end, which insulates it from direct price competition with lower-cost chains but also limits its total addressable store count in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, where disposable income and footfall patterns differ significantly from metros.

The Tata partnership is central to the India story for SBUX. Tata Consumer Products brings local sourcing relationships, real estate access through Tata Group's retail footprint, and regulatory familiarity that would be difficult for a foreign operator to replicate independently. The JV structure also means that India expansion does not consume SBUX capital directly, reducing balance-sheet risk while the company executes a broader global restructuring under CEO Brian Niccol.

For investors watching SBUX, India is a growth optionality story rather than a near-term revenue driver. The international segment remains a fraction of overall revenue, but the pace of JV store openings is a signal of management confidence in the unit economics. The 50-to-100 range for annual openings gives Tata Starbucks flexibility to accelerate in strong-performing markets and throttle back if macroeconomic or consumer conditions deteriorate.