Starbucks said on Friday it appointed an Indian national Anand Varadarajan as its new Chief Technology Officer, effective January 19. The move supports CEO Brian Niccol’s push for a tech revamp in stores to make labour more efficient. Varadarajan will replace Deb Hall Lefevre, who stepped down in September, after which Starbucks named Ningyu Chen as interim CTO.CEO of Starbuck shared the message online, saying, “I’m proud to share that Anand Varadarajan will join us as executive vice president and CTO, starting January 19. He’ll be part of the Executive Leadership Team, lead the Starbucks Technology organization, and will report directly to me.””Outside of work, he’s an avid runner aiming to complete all seven World Marathon Majors. He’s also a coffee enthusiast and starts most days with a tall latte or brewed coffee, followed by an order of Starbucks egg bites for lunch,” he added.Who is Anand Varadarajan? Varadarajan joins from Amazon, where he spent 19 years heading the technology and supply chain operations for its worldwide grocery business. He’s also held software engineering roles at Oracle and worked for several startups. Earlier in his career, Varadarajan was a Senior Software Engineer at Viquity Inc. (1999–2001), where he designed guaranteed delivery protocols for B2B supply chain messaging, including full protocol stacks for RosettaNet.Starbucks posted its first quarter of gains in comparable sales after nearly a year and a half in late October, as the company started to see some returns from Niccol’s extensive turnaround efforts in the United States.Varadarajan holds a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Washington and a Master’s degree in Civil Engineering from Purdue University. Anand earned his undergraduate degree from the Indian Institute of Technology.