Curefoods chases multiple ₹300 crore premium and niche brands as it widens food portfolio

The Bengaluru-based cloud kitchen operator is working on adding brands to its portfolio that can each reach ₹200-300 crore in revenue, spreading its bets across multiple cuisines and consumption occasions. It currently has eight brands including Kitchens of Eatfit, Sharief Bhai, Krispy Kreme and CakeZone. “The big learning is that it is very difficult to make a brand bigger than ₹300 crore in India,” founder and CEO Ankit Nagori told Mint in an interview, pointing to rapidly fragmenting consumer tastes in the country’s food market. Curefoods plans to tap the public markets with an ₹800 crore offering just as sentiment toward food companies has cooled. Shares of Domino’s Pizza parent Jubilant FoodWorks are down 15-20% over the past year, while Devyani International, the operator of KFC and Pizza Hut in India, has fallen 15-17%. Food delivery growth at Swiggy and Eternal’s Zomato has moderated after the pandemic boom, reflecting broader consumption pressures. Executives said the slowdown is not limited to a few companies. “We have seen phases of weak consumption over the last six quarters. This is widespread across the country as macro factors touch everyone,” said Madhur Singhal, managing partner for consumer and internet at consultancy Praxis Global Alliance. However, Nagori said the broader slowdown narrative does not reflect what the company sees on the ground. “The last few quarters for the food industry have been a bit of a yo-yo. Consumption had gone to a rock bottom earlier, but it is definitely improving now,” he said. Demand continues to evolve rather than stagnate as consumers shift how and where they spend on food, he added. “Consumers are now very clear about where they want to spend money,” Nagori said, pointing to strong demand in premium segments such as gourmet pizzas and desserts. High-value brands The premium-and-niche strategy is shaping Curefoods’ expansion as it looks to triple revenue to roughly ₹3,000 crore over the next five years from an estimated ₹1,000 crore in FY26, Nagori said. The company’s operating revenue increased 28% to ₹746 crore in FY25 from ₹585 crore in the previous year and its loss remained little changed at ₹170 crore in the last fiscal year. Rather than concentrate on a single flagship brand, the company is building a portfolio of brands that can be scaled up, he added. “We think four or five brands will reach ₹300 crore… others will reach ₹200 crore,” Nagori said. Curefoods operates eight brands, according to its website, including Eatfit’s healthy food, Sharief Bhai biryanis, Olio pizzas and CakeZone’s desserts, along with Krispy Kreme doughnuts. Eatfit and Sharief Bhai generate roughly ₹150-175 crore each in annual revenue, while the others are in the ₹80-90 crore range, according to the executive. “People are micro-breaking their expectations,” Nagori said, describing how consumers increasingly prefer to buy food from specialized outlets rather than rely on a single chain. That fragmentation makes it difficult for any one brand to dominate the market, he noted. And the shift toward multiple niche brands is becoming common across food-tech platforms. “While there is some saturation in penetration in key cities, the move toward premium and niche formats is also about expanding average order values and order frequency within an already penetrated customer base,” Praxis Global Alliance’s Singhal said. New categories To build its next set of brands, Curefoods is expanding into categories where it previously had limited presence. One such experiment is a burger-and-fried-chicken brand called PHAT. Nagori said PHAT has already reached about ₹1 crore in monthly revenue within three months of rollout. It is present in about 30 kitchens and once the company expands it across its roughly 300 cloud kitchen locations, Nagori estimates the brand could generate ₹10 crore a month. At the same time, the company is doubling down on desserts, a category that Nagori said lends itself well to cloud kitchens and offline kiosks. Krispy Kreme’s India operations, which it acquired in May last year, has emerged as one of the fastest-growing bets in the portfolio, according to Nagori. Doughnuts fit well into Curefoods’ network because most of the production happens centrally, allowing outlets or kitchens to function mainly as pickup and dispatch points. “All you need is a small space to put a kiosk. When orders come in, pick, put it in a box and dispatch,” he said. The format also works in high-footfall environments such as airports, malls and office parks, where impulse purchases drive sales. “We are in airports, we are in tech parks, we are in malls. We don’t want to drive footfall. Wherever there is footfall, if there is Krispy Kreme, people will buy it,” Nagori said. The company has benefited from a digital-first strategy and cloud kitchen expansion, with about half its revenue coming from online channels. Curefoods continues to invest in health-focused offerings through brands such as Eatfit. According to Singhal, demand for healthier food options is expanding beyond affluent consumers. “More affluent customers started the trend, but healthy eating habits are picking up across all segments,” he said, adding that the growing supply of healthy options is encouraging adoption. Food platform Curefoods’ expansion strategy is built around leveraging its cloud kitchen network as a distribution backbone. With hundreds of kitchens already in place, the company said it can add new brands without the heavy capital investment typically required for restaurant chains. “We’ve got a very strong distribution. You can mount a lot of these new concepts on top of that,” Nagori said. Beyond delivery, Curefoods is expanding through physical outlets and quick commerce channels, building what Nagori described as a hybrid distribution system spanning online delivery, offline retail and rapid commerce platforms. If the approach works, the company expects to evolve into a scaled food platform built not on a single blockbuster chain, but on a portfolio of mid-sized brands catering to India’s increasingly diverse tastes.