Blue Tokai raises more funding as coffee investments surge in India

Blue Tokai just pulled in another Rs 175 crore, or about $19 million, and the size of the check says as much about the market as it does about the company. The extension of its Series D round, led by Anicut Capital with A91 Emerging Fund, Verlinvest and 12 Flags among the backers, pushes total investment in the Indian specialty coffee group above $130 million and keeps the pressure on scale.

For Blue Tokai, founded in Gurugram in 2013, the goal is no longer just to sell better beans. The company is aiming for 800 stores globally by the end of 2027, a target that shows how specialty coffee in India has moved from cult brand status toward a retail machine. That ambition places Blue Tokai at the center of a larger wave in which investors are backing brands that can turn café traffic, packaged coffee and direct customer loyalty into repeatable growth.

The same pattern is showing up across India’s branded coffee scene. abcoffee raised 61 crore, or $6.3 million, in a pre-Series B round led by Kliff Ventures, the newly launched consumer retail fund backed by K Hospitality Corp, with Hero Enterprise Partner Ventures, Merisis Venture Fund and Stride Ventures also participating. Founded in 2022 by Abhijeet Anand, abcoffee says it now runs more than 90 compact outlets across Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Bengaluru. The company says revenue doubled in FY26 and store-level EBITDA rose 193.2% year on year, the kind of operating story that makes small-format coffee especially attractive to capital.

The valuation chatter around Third Wave Coffee points in the same direction. The chain is being reported as potentially heading toward a $400 million valuation, well above a prior $150 million mark, a sign that investors are still willing to pay up for India’s fastest-growing branded coffee concepts when the expansion math looks credible.

Outside India, the money is just as revealing. Melitta Group is investing €100 million over five years to lift production at its Bremen roasting plant by 50%, part of a push to make it Europe’s largest coffee roastery and help the Minden-based company pursue double group sales by 2033 after closing 2025 with 18% sales growth to a record €2.5 billion. In New York, Maman secured fresh financing through a single-asset continuation vehicle for Sugar Beets Inc., led by Kline Hill Partners with Norwest, a large Ivy League endowment and a meaningful reinvestment from TriSpan. Maman now has 56 locations across nine U.S. states and Canada after growing its North America footprint fivefold since late 2020.

Consolidation is moving just as fast as expansion. Dutch Bros said on May 12, 2026, that it would acquire the Phoenix East Valley franchise, adding 29 shops in a deal expected to close in the third quarter of 2026 after owner Jim Thompson retires. The chain had already bought North Carolina-based Clutch Coffee Bar for about $20 million earlier in 2026, and it operated 1,177 shops across 25 states as of March 31. Put together, the round-up reads like a map of where coffee capital is heading next: bigger Indian chains, bigger roasters, and more ownership control over the cafés customers actually walk into.