Coffee Houses and Food Biz Sizzle

Coffee Houses and Food Biz Sizzle
The combination of challenges and opportunities in the Indian food business is producing a fizzing cocktail of creativity (India's Coffee King, BT cover, May 16). Thanks to the efforts of players like Cafe Coffee Day's V.G. Siddhartha, this previously quiescent business is now being leavened with fresh entrepreneurial energy and attracting big investments.

— Vineet Achyut, Delhi

A Game-changing Play
It's rare to come across examples when a chain has been able to single-handedly scramble up the whole industry. With a rare pairing of micro-management skills with big-picture vision, Cafe Coffee Day's promoter V.G. Siddhartha presents a good example of a fresh, out of box performance in an industry not known for entrepreneurial brio and business innovation. Today, Siddhartha and CCD are not only turning the business of coffee houses from niche to the norm, they are helping build what could be the new epicentre of an industry about to catch fire.

— Vineet Madhukar, Delhi

Yehi Hai Right Choice!
We've extraordinary culinary riches at our doorstep but our experience of neighbourhood food joints leaves much to be desired. Providing quality hygienic food at price points that consumers can respond to easily is therefore a big business opportunity. By opening chic Indian fast food outlets in metro neighbourhoods, companies like Goli Vada Pav and East West Ethnic Foods are tapping into this wellspring of growing urban demand.

— Shashi Shekhar, Bangalore

Making Them Jobsworthy
Thanks for focussing on pre-recruitment assessment firms and jobs-testing agencies (Matching Aspirations, BT, May 2). Agencies like AMCAT, E-Litmus and NASSCOM's NAC-Tech have been of great help in preparing our students at JMIT Radaur, Haryana. Last year, about 70 students got through tests conducted by these agencies and were eventually placed with various companies. This year we hope to do even better.

— Ashwani Kumar Chhabra, Radaur

A Correction
I refer to the use of "Tetra Pak juices" in your story Worn Out at Work (BT, April 18). You should have said "juices packed in Tetra Pak packaging material". The name Tetra Pak is associated with aseptic filling machines, aseptic processing equipment and aseptic packaging material and is not applied to juice production.

— A. Kekre, Tetra Pak India

Fighting Insurgency
Reality is never quite as tidy as theory and our fight against the Naxalites (Red Cloud Over Business, BT, May 16) brings out this hard truth. Despite devising various strategies to take out this cancer of violence, the insurgency has spread to a vast area that affects 450 million people. While the option is not new, maybe we should focus on better statelevel policing and development schemes to weaken the insurgency.

— M. Kumar, Delhi