Blue Tokai Raises Rs 175 Crore, Targets 800 Stores by 2027

Blue Tokai Coffee Roasters has gone back to the market for another Rs 175 crore, or about $19 million, and it paired the fresh money with a striking target: 800 stores globally by the end of 2027. For a brand that helped shape India’s specialty coffee scene, that is the clearest sign yet that premium coffee is moving from a niche habit to a mainstream urban category.

The latest extension of Blue Tokai’s Series D round was led by Anicut Capital, with A91 Emerging Fund, Verlinvest, 12 Flags and other investors joining in. The board approved issuing 6,194 Series D2 preference shares at Rs 2,82,549 each. Anicut Capital is investing Rs 50 crore, while A91 Emerging Fund, Verlinvest and 12 Flags are putting in Rs 35 crore, Rs 30 crore and Rs 20 crore respectively. The raise lifted total investment in Blue Tokai to more than $130 million.

The new capital comes as Blue Tokai’s footprint keeps widening. The company currently operates over 175 cafes across multiple Indian cities, and it has identified Dubai and Japan as international expansion markets. Its FY25 revenue rose 50% year on year to Rs 325 crore, while losses narrowed 20.6% to Rs 50 crore. Those numbers matter because they show a brand still in aggressive build-out mode, but with enough scale and momentum to keep drawing capital for the next phase.

That next phase raises the question that matters most to coffee drinkers: can Blue Tokai scale without flattening the experience that made it stand out? The company has already been talking about opening 80 to 90 new outlets a year, and earlier 2025 reporting placed its longer-range ambition at 800-plus stores and Rs 2,000 crore in revenue within four years. If Blue Tokai gets there, it will not just be a bigger chain. It will shape where specialty coffee shows up in everyday life, from office districts to neighborhood streets, while taking a much harder run at Third Wave Coffee, Sleepy Owl Coffee, Hatti Kaapi, Café Coffee Day and Starbucks.

Blue Tokai was founded in 2013 by Matt Chitharanjan, Namrata Asthana and Shivam Shahi, and the company’s rise has become a useful barometer for India’s coffee market. Shivam Shahi has said India is at “the start of India’s coffee story,” and this fundraise suggests the brand intends to spend heavily to prove that story is still in its opening chapter.