Highlights
- Anand Varadarajan appointed Starbucks CTO, effective 19 January, after 19 years at Amazon.
- IIT graduate to oversee tech transformation in stores to improve labour efficiency.
- Appointment comes as Starbucks reports first quarterly sales gains in nearly 18 months.
Starbucks has named Anand Varadarajan as its new chief technology officer, effective January (19), as CEO Brian Niccol drives a technology overhaul aimed at making store operations more efficient.
Varadarajan joins the global coffee chain after spending 19 years at Amazon, where he led technology and supply chain operations for the company's worldwide grocery business. He replaces Deb Hall Lefevre, who stepped down in September, with Ningyu Chen serving as interim CTO.
The appointment comes at a crucial time for Starbucks, which posted its first quarter of comparable sales gains in late October after nearly a year and a half of decline. The results signal early returns from Niccol's extensive turnaround efforts in the United States.
An Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) graduate, Varadarajan brings extensive technical expertise to the role. He holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Washington and a Master's degree in Civil Engineering from Purdue University.
Before his lengthy tenure at Amazon, Varadarajan held software engineering positions at Oracle and worked for several startups.
Earlier in his career, he served as a Senior Software Engineer at Viquity Inc. from 1999 to 2001, where he designed guaranteed delivery protocols for business-to-business supply chain messaging, including full protocol stacks for RosettaNet.
Varadarajan's experience in managing large-scale technology and supply chain operations at Amazon is expected to be instrumental as Starbucks continues its transformation efforts in an increasingly competitive market.
