From rare treat to daily ritual: How abcoffee is making coffee an everyday luxury in India

Abhijeet Anand, founder and CEO, abcoffee, is on mission to make coffee a daily habit across traditionally tea-drinking India. His mantra? If you keep quality high and costs low, the rest will follow

For decades, coffee shops around the world have found success trading in moments of affordable luxury. Through recessions, a pandemic, and even conflict, consumers tended to ringfence low-cost indulgence purchases when times are tight.

It’s a phenomenon Estée Lauder’s Leonard Lauder coined the ‘lipstick effect’ in 2001 after he noticed a spike in lipstick sales during the post 9/11 economic slump.

For Abhijeet Anand, founder and CEO of value-focused specialty coffee chain abcoffee, making coffee an affordable daily habit in India is crucial for both the success of his business and the country’s burgeoning coffee shop market.

Today, Mumbai-based abCoffee operates 78 takeaway-focused locations across India, more than 50 of which have opened within the last 12 months. With the wind in its sails after raising more than $5.4m investment to date, abcoffee (pronounced ‘ahb’, meaning ‘now’ in Hindi), is seizing the moment for affordable specialty coffee in India.