Starbucks Coffee in India

In March 2012 in the Canadian periodal Maclean’s, Tamson McMahon wrote an article entitled “Move over, Darjeeling.” It describes Starbucks’ decision to open 50 new Starbucks locations in India, where the consumption of coffee has doubled since 1999. Starbucks planned to join with Tata Group, which owns two major tea brands in India. The cafés were planned to be called “Starbucks Coffee: A Tata Alliance.” Calling the cafes "alliances" is too political to not draw suspicion. The article claims that Starbucks planned to use Indian-grown coffee, which would assist the farmers. Behind China, India is the world’s biggest tea exporter, but represents a mere five percent of coffee growers worldwide. Despite how great an idea this seems, there is a lot of competition, such as Café Coffee Day in India -- which already hosted 1,200 locations and hoped to open 1,000 more. Comparatively, Starbucks wasn't making a grand move here, but it seems they were opening up just a few stores. Perhaps enough stores to guarantee they will glean a profit without risking big losses because of competition – and in the process look like they are in an “alliance” with major tea brands in India and supporting their farmers. I fear that corporations like Starbucks trying to ‘boost up’ coffee growers might be an attempt to make India dependent on the corporate coffee shops for significant growth in exports. If they have so many coffee shops already, why are they only in the 5% of coffee growers worldwide? Do they believe Starbucks can change that percentage rate in a mere 50 café additions? If so, that is a disturbing amount of dependence to be placed on Starbucks. Hopefully with further research I can find out what has happened with these planned coffee shops over a year later.