The Coffee Board announced establishing the Coffee Entrepreneurship Centre in Bangalore in order to sustain the coffee cafe culture in India. The Chairman of Coffee Board, Jawaid Akhtar explained that the idea came up because of rapid growth of coffee cafes as well as parlours in India, especially in the non-traditional (non-coffee growing States) areas. However, there is a dearth of manpower in these areas.

The primary objective of the Coffee Entrepreneurship Centre is to create the manpower base. This base would be created by facilitating training to people scientifically and providing them the knowledge about specialty coffees.

Also the objective is creation of the manpower in various levels of coffee business such as setting of roast and ground (R&G) outlets as well as coffee retailing. This will also assist the entrepreneurs in establishing as well as operating the cafes with the formal training.

In order to facilitate the educational support, the Coffee Board also roped in Indian Institute of Plantation Management (IIPM). The Coffee Entrepreneurship Centre is infact housed in the IIPM campus of Bangalore.

The Centre will provide lab-scale experience to people in making espresso coffee, traditional brewing, grinding coffee as well as roasting. The Board will make use of the faculty at IIPM in order to run the courses. At present, there are approximately 2200 coffee cafes in India which are operated by the big companies like Barista, Costa and Café Coffee Day.

The Coffee Entrepreneurship Centre will have one-month courses on How to start coffee businesses as well as How to make different coffees.

Coffee Board gave grant of 30 lakh Rupees in order to set up this centre.

source: http://www.jagranjosh.com / Jagran Josh / Home> English / June 13th, 2013