Starbucks opens two all-female stores in India
This week, Starbucks store lead Kirti Sharma and her all-female team opened a new café in the heart of Delhi, one of two new Starbucks stores in India staffed entirely by women.
This week, Starbucks store lead Kirti Sharma and her all-female team opened a new café in the heart of Delhi, one of two new Starbucks stores in India staffed entirely by women. Sharma, the first woman in her family to enter the workforce, wants both her team and the world to know that women, ‘we can do anything.’
Kirti Sharma is the first woman in her family to have a career.
This week, the 23-year-old store lead helped open a Starbucks in India led entirely by a team of women. Her store, in the heart of India’s capital of Delhi, is the first of two all-female stores to open this week in the country with more to come.
“Times are changing in India. We have to make a change in our society. We have to start it from our homes,” Sharma said. “I always coach my team that we, as women, we can do anything. All the work men can do, we can do as well, and we will. I am so proud of them and I am 100 percent sure they will achieve anything they want to achieve in their lives.”
A 2019 report from the World Bank found that in India, only about 20 percent of working-age women participate in the labor force. An Oxfam report on inequality, published in January of 2019, revealed that women in the workplace receive 34 percent less pay than their male counterparts for the same work. The all-female Starbucks stores aim to help address both of those inequalities while also providing women a supportive and encouraging work environment.
Sharma, who started her first full-time job at Starbucks in 2018 after graduating with a degree in hotel management, said her parents are proud – her mother in particular.
“I still remember the day when I gave my first income to my mom and she was very happy. She started crying,” Sharma said. “She told me, ‘Our daughter has done something which we had dreamt of.’ That was a very proud and most emotional moment for me.”
She was also the first in her family to leave their hometown of Delhi for school. In 2014, she traveled across India to Bangalore to study hotel management. A Starbucks recruiter came to her college to do interviews and offered the 60 students in her class a coffee tasting. It was the first time she’d ever tasted coffee. She immediately applied for a job.
“I remember it was Indian Estate Blend, and I can still remember how beautifully she explained about that coffee, about the herbal notes and flavors and everything,” Sharma said. “That sip of coffee inspired me to join Starbucks. Because of that sip, I am here. Destiny took me here as well.”
Starbucks came to India in 2012, operated through a joint venture between Starbucks and Tata Global Beverages. Tata Starbucks has been at the forefront of providing opportunities for women and promoting equity, inclusion and diversity in India. Currently, 28 percent of Starbucks partners in India are women with the goal of achieving 40 percent gender diversity by the end of 2022. Tata Starbucks has achieved 100 percent gender pay equity and was the first food and beverage retailer in India to offer a five-day work schedule. Tata Starbucks also offers its partners childcare assistance, flexible working hours and family leave. Sharma said policies like these have already opened doors for women.
“Every partner wants to work with Tata Starbucks because of its culture, values and the partner friendly policies. It gives equal opportunity for men and women. It gives us confidence, supports us and makes us feel that there is somebody who is listening to us,” Sharma said. “And the five-day work week and part-time and weekend policies mean partners can study and work side-by-side and achieve their dreams.”
And her dream?
“My vision is that I want to retire with Tata Starbucks,” she said.
— Jennifer Warnick
