Key facts
- Starbucks plans to open a technology office in India.
- The office will be located in Chennai.
- The move is part of a $2 billion cost-cutting strategy.
- The center is expected to create about 800 jobs in its first phase.
- The office is scheduled to be operational in fiscal year 2027.
- The company aims to bring outsourced technology functions in-house.
Starbucks is establishing its first specialized technology office in India as part of an aggressive push to slash costs and strengthen technology competitiveness. The strategy aims to absorb core functions previously outsourced to external technology vendors, targeting savings of approximately $2 billion.
According to Bloomberg on May 16, 2026, Starbucks plans to finalize a site for the India office by year-end and begin recruiting local technology talent. The office is targeted to officially open during the company's fiscal year 2027, which begins this October. The India office represents a central pillar of Starbucks' ongoing $2 billion cost-cutting plan. While the company had previously outsourced certain technology functions during restructuring, it has now completely reversed course, pivoting toward an in-house talent model. The plan eliminates the intermediary margins charged by external technology firms while improving cross-team collaboration efficiency.
Anand Varadarajan, Starbucks' Chief Technology Officer, told employees in a message that the company "is focused on reducing dependency on external service providers" and that "establishing hubs in multiple regions is a meaningful step toward that goal." A Starbucks spokesperson characterized the insourcing objective as "a move to create a tighter connection between the work and the teams performing it."
Starbucks is already accelerating its technology reorganization within the United States. The company previously announced it would relocate approximately 270 technology positions — roughly 20% of its tech workforce — to a new office in Nashville, Tennessee. Simultaneously, large-scale technology headcount reductions are underway. According to Bloomberg, Starbucks has eliminated more than 2,000 technology jobs since February of last year and reportedly laid off an additional 300 employees this week.
Through this dual-track strategy leveraging two technology hubs — India and Nashville — Starbucks is accelerating efforts to reduce outsourcing expenses while insourcing critical technology capabilities. A government source said on Monday that the US coffee chain plans to set up a global capability centre (GCC) in the southern Indian city of Chennai, creating roughly 800 jobs in the first phase.