After lifestyle brands, it's India's cafe chains that are trying to find their space in students' lives. Students across educational institutions, from IIMs and IlTs to the more laidback undergrad liberal arts, science and commerce colleges, are making a beeline for the friendly, neighbourhood cafe. Cafe Coffee Day (CCD) estimates that 60% of the footfalls in its 300 outlets belong to students between the ages of 15 and 24 years. Barista Coffee Company (BCC) pegs students' share of footfalls across its 130 bars at around 40%.

CCD has even designated certain urban centres as `student towns' on the basis of the profile and percentage of footfalls. CCD senior general manager (Marketing) Sudipta Sen Gupta says, "Around 50 of our 300 cafes are in what we categories as student towns like Pune, Ahmedabad, Mussoorie, Dehradun, Ooty, Manipal, Jamshedpur, Bhubaneswar, Nagpur, Mangalore and Kolhapur. Students account for 85% of the footfalls in CCD outlets in these towns and everything from the decor and the menu to the music and the coffee is planned accordingly. For instance, students prefer snacks to meals. They do not go for straight coffees like espressos, lattes and cappuccinos but prefer coffees with add-ons like chocolate sauce, whipped cream, honey and almond flake. Students will be students even at the CCD outlet in IIMBangalore where they prefer to drop by when the professors are not around!"

Barista, adds its marketing head Surjya Meher, started bars within 1 km of the IIM-Ahmedabad campus on Vastrapur Road and outside the IIT-Delhi gates. "Some 17 Barista bars are located near premier institutes like IIM-Indore and 11T- Chennai and 22 near other colleges. Most provide WiFi and the demand is constantly increasing with some students bringing their laptops. It's not just all work and no play! The students make full use of the guitars and chessboards in our bars. We play peppy music. Our feed-back is that students order in groups and prefer snacks."

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