This D2C brand is taking on FMCG giants with instant curry pastes, easy cooking products

Two friends with a shared passion for food found the right ingredients to start their venture, CURRYiT. Tapping into the growing demand for easy home-cooked meals, it offers ready-to-cook Indian curry bases to simplify everyday cooking.

The startup focuses on traditional recipes, from dhaba-style Butter Masala to Chettinad Chicken Curry, CURRYiT’s range caters to customers looking for quick meal solutions without the extensive prep work.

Founded in 2020 by IIM Udaipur alums and YES Bank colleagues Richa Sharma and Nischal Kandula, the Delhi-based D2C brand is striking a chord with busy millennials, and foodies, among others. The company also sees traction from Tier II and Tier III cities of the country.

The company says its products are FDA-approved, HACCP-certified, SPICE board approved, and ISO-certified.

The journey

“Both of us have families abroad and we realised that cooking is a huge challenge, not just outside India, but in India as well. So we spoke to 300-400 people across age groups, cities, and demographics—men, women, teenagers, and people older than 60—to understand people’s relationship with food,” Sharma, Co-founder, CURRYiT tells YourStory.

While Sharma worked at Bertelsmann India Investments and Kandula gained experience at Muse Wearables, and vHealth by Aetna, the duo wanted to do something in the food space, however, they didn’t just want to run another cloud kitchen. Based on their study, they found that people were looking for easy cooking, and did not want to get into cumbersome preparation like chopping vegetables. Many respondents were also unsure about the measurements and which recipe to follow.

Also Read

How Kandee Factory is bringing a vegan twist to its candies, marshmallows

This was the pain point that the duo wished to solve. “Existing solutions in the market include masalas such as garam masala, sambar masala, dal masala etc. Then there was the other extreme of ready-to-eat,” says the co-founder, who noticed that many consumers took to ready-to-eat food products as a last resort. With curry pastes, customers only need to add the vegetables or protein of choice to cook a dish.

Product and operations

The company offers 17 SKUs, including ten varieties of curry pastes, Hyderabadi biryani paste, four daily cooking pastes, along with two soups.

The curry pastes include Bombay Pav Bhaji, Andhra Mutton Curry, Ghar Wala Rajma Masala, and Purani Delhi Chhole Masala, which are all priced at Rs 151 and serve three. The Hyderabadi biryani paste is priced at Rs 151.

Meanwhile, the daily cooking pastes such as ginger garlic paste, ginger paste, and garlic paste are priced at Rs 99 and can be used for 10 servings. The tomato purée is priced at Rs 79. The ‘preservative free’ tomato and mixed veg soups are both available in combo packs that serve two and are priced at Rs 229 each.

Sharma says that its soups are non-dehydrated, and have no cornflour. The tomato and vegetable soups’ ingredients include 95% vegetables. The rest is salt, olive oil and pepper, she adds.

The company sells its products via quick commerce platforms BlinkIt, Swiggy Instamart and Zepto; ecommerce platform Amazon; its D2C Website, and 20 retail stores, including Le Marche and Nature’s Basket. About 70% of its sales come from quick commerce platforms, and the rest is via ecommerce and D2C with a small portion from retail.

CURRYiT claims all products are preservative-free. It launched the product nationally in March 2022 with a 12-month shelf life and shelf-stable, without the need for refrigeration. “We invested a lot in our packaging and used autoclave technology, which brings us that shelf life without adding any preservatives,” explains the co-founder.

Autoclave technology uses high-pressure, high-temperature steam to simultaneously cook and sterilise food. This destroys harmful microorganisms and improves food safety.

“Three things spoil food, water, temperature and air, and by controlling them, any product can be made stable,” says Sharma.

The company also vacuum seals its products, which controls temperature. “It is highly barricaded and has six layers of barricading so air and the temperature don't get in touch with the food,” she adds.

It co-creates its recipes with home cooks and chefs from the region. While the mothers and the khansamas bring art to the products, the chefs bring precision and science. 

Funding and future

In August last year, the company raised Rs 4.5 crore in a seed round led by RK Family Trust, Tangent Advisors, and Freeflow Ventures.

It clocked a revenue of Rs 1.15  crore in FY24, and grew to Rs 5.8 crore in FY25. It projects to reach Rs 20 crore in FY 25-26.

It competes with companies including Knorr and MDH, which operate in the soups and spices spaces. The founder also sees any company that centres itself around masalas, cooking, spices, and soups as its competitor. It looks to differentiate itself with the preservative-free nature of its products and packaging.

CURRYiT plans to launch another category this year, expand into more distribution channels, and go deeper into quick commerce and D2C, says Sharma.

Additionally, it plans to go global by 2026. Having received positive responses from their testing in the US through Amazon FBA, the company plans to expand to the Middle East, Singapore, Hong Kong, Canada, the US, the UK, and Germany once the business in India stabilises, she adds.

While the company already has a manufacturing unit in Delhi, it plans to invest in it to increase its capacity and automate more tasks to speed up production and increase its scale. With its zero-touch preparation post-washing, the cooking process is completely automated except for the stirring part which is at present manual, which it plans to automate.

(The story was updated for clarity)