NEW DELHI: An Indian coffee shop chain rhyming with Starbucks and with a similar logo has agreed to change its name after being sued by the US giant, the Indian firm said Friday.
Starbucks, which entered the vast Indian market in 2012 and now has 125 outlets, began legal proceedings against “SardarBuksh,” which has 25 shops in New Delhi, in July.
“Our name rhymed with Starbucks which is why the court has ruled (on Thursday) in their favor,” Sanmeet Singh Kalra, co-founder of SardarBuksh, told AFP.
His company has agreed to change the name to the not-particularly-different “Sardarji-Bakhsh” within two months.
But Kalra said that his logo, which like Starbuck’s is a circle of green and black with a figure at the center — albeit a man in a turban and not a mermaid — will not change.
Harish Bijoor, a branding consultant, said that Indian firms often use names that are similar to well-known multinational brands.
“Such imitators have limited ambition and they enjoy their moment of limelight of having ambushed an iconic brand in India,” Bijoor told AFP.
In 2015, US fast food giant Burger King reportedly took a street vendor in the northern city of Ludhiana to court for using the name “Mr Singh Burger King.”
Indian chain “Burger Singh” has been left alone, however, opening 20 outlets in India with plans to expand into the British market, according to media reports.
“Singh” is a commonly used last name in India’s Hindu and Sikh communities.
Sued by Starbucks, Indian coffee chain changes name
Sued by Starbucks, Indian coffee chain changes name
- An Indian coffee shop chain rhyming with Starbucks and with a similar logo has agreed to change its name after being sued by the US giant
- Starbucks, which entered the vast Indian market in 2012 and now has 125 outlets, began legal proceedings against “SardarBuksh,”
Vietnam police find frozen tiger bodies, arrest two men
Vietnamese police have found two dead tigers inside freezers in a man’s basement, arresting him and another for illicit trade in the endangered animal, the force said Saturday.
The Southeast Asian country is a consumption hub and popular trading route for illegal animal products, including tiger bones which are used in traditional medicine.
Police in Thanh Hoa province, south of the capital Hanoi, said they had found the frozen bodies ot two adult tigers, weighing about 400 kilograms (882 pounds) in total, in the basement of 52-year-old man Hoang Dinh Dat.
In a statement posted online, police said the man told officers he had bought the animals for two billion dong ($77,000), identifying the seller as 31-year-old Nguyen Doan Son.
Both had been arrested earlier this week, police said.
According to the statement, the buyer had equipment to produce so-called tiger bone glue, a sticky substance believed to heal skeletal ailments.
Tigers used to roam Vietnam’s forests, but have now disappeared almost entirely.
