Café Coffee Day (CCD), India’s leading youth aggregator has tied up with leading and ‘neutral’ Wi-Fi service provider O-Zone Networks to provide free Wi-Fi access to customers at its cafes in select cities across the country.
CCD will now provide high-speed connectivity to its tech-driven customers through a dedicated leased line at its cafes, the operator of India’s largest coffee chain said.
The Wi-Fi service at CCD will be offered free of charge for the first 30 minutes.
Post this, the user will have to pay a nominal amount starting at Rs. 15 for 30 minutes for 1 GB usage.
The longer a user uses Wi-Fi at the café or the more data they consume, the lower will be the usage amount. Additionally, SpeedFetch users in the 24 cafes in Delhi will have unlimited access to content at zero bandwidth cost.
“With the growing usage of smart-phones and increasing demand for data while away from office and home, there is a strong need for Wi-Fi at hangouts frequented by people on a regular basis,” it added.
Cafe Coffee Day and competitors like Barista and Starbucks have been offering free Wifi, but only in certain locations.
The installation of Wi-Fi infrastructure at CCD outlets will be done in a phased manner.
In the first phase, 225 CCD outlets in Delhi and Bangalore have gone live with Wi-Fi capability. In the next phase, the roll out will include CCD outlets in other cities including Kolkata, Hyderabad, Chennai and Goa. Apart from Wi-Fi, CCD will take another step in digital innovation with O-Zone Networks providing bandwidth and IP to run the café chain’s PoS systems and camera.
In addition to that, CCD users in 24 CCD outlets in the initial phase will be able to avail O-Zone’s association with SpeedFetch to download digital content such as games, Hollywood and Bollywood content at hyper speeds.
Speaking on the association Venu Madhav, CEO, Café Coffee Day, said, “Ensuring customer delight with innovation in products and services is vital in the café industry. Today with the rise of smart phones, there is not only an increasing need to stay connected at all times but also a demand for high-speed connections since our audiences are multi-tasking on various applications and time is of the essence. With our association with O-Zone Networks, we aim to provide this service to our patrons who will now be able to enjoy free, fast and secure Wi-Fi connection and benefit from the enhanced café experience.”
Sanjeev ‘Bobby’ Sarin, Founder and CEO of O-Zone Networks, said: “O-Zone Networks is very excited about this new strategic partnership with CCD. We are the market leaders in providing Public Wi-Fi service and we believe this collaboration is another step forward in our endeavor to establish a large “neutral” network for our partners to broadcast their SSIDs to their subscribers like Reliance Communication and others in the near future. Together with CCD we aim to offer the consumer the ability to seamlessly and easily connect to the Internet, delivering a much better consumer experience.
CCD is India’s largest café chain in terms of number of café outlets as of December 31, 2014 and operates through Coffee Day Global Limited , a subsidiary of Coffee Day Enterprises Limited.
It has pioneered the coffee culture in the chained café segment in India and opened its first café in Bengaluru in 1996.
CCD’s menu ranges from a mix of hot and cold coffees and include several food options, desserts and pastries. In addition, CCD brand merchandise and accessories such as coffee mugs, coffee machines, travel mugs, etc. are available at the cafés.