Caffè Nero enters India through a Trent Limited deal
The London coffeehouse group's first Mumbai café, via a tie-up with the Tata-owned retailer behind Westside, marks its first major international move in nearly a decade.
Caffè Nero is entering India, opening its first café in Mumbai through a partnership with Trent Limited, the Tata Group retailer behind Westside, in the chain's first major international move in almost a decade.
The deal makes India Caffè Nero's 12th market worldwide. Gerry Ford, founder and group chief executive of The Nero Group, called India a "fantastic market with huge potential" and said Trent "will be a great partner for us as they share our vision for premium, specialty coffee."
A chain built on independence
India is a fantastic market with huge potential.
The Nero Group, founded by Ford in 1997 and based in London, describes itself as Europe's largest independent coffeehouse group. It runs more than 1,200 coffee houses across ten countries, including the UK, Ireland, Sweden, Poland, Cyprus, Croatia, Turkey, the UAE, Oman and the US, under the Caffè Nero, Coffee#1, 200 Degrees Coffee and FCB Coffee brands.
In India, the brand will serve its signature Classico espresso blend alongside food developed for local tastes. No opening date has been set for the Mumbai site, and further openings are planned to follow alongside Trent's existing retail formats, rather than as a standalone chain built from scratch.
A crowded but growing market
India's café market was worth $424.6 million in 2025, according to figures cited in the deal's announcement, and is projected to reach $1.15 billion by 2034, a compound annual growth rate of 11.14 percent. Urbanisation, rising disposable incomes and a widening café culture among millennials are cited as the main drivers behind that growth.
Caffè Nero joins a market that already counts Starbucks, run in India as a joint venture with Tata, alongside homegrown chains and a wave of entrants from abroad. Coffee chains elsewhere in Asia have been expanding just as fast, from Cambodia to the Gulf.
For Trent, the deal adds a premium coffee name to a retail business built mostly on fashion and department stores, the kind of pairing it has leaned on before to bring international brands into its portfolio.
