This D2C brand is bringing affordable premium ice cream to India

When Tanvi Chowdhri left behind her career as a hedge fund trader on Wall Street, the move surprised many around her. Armed with a mechanical engineering degree from Carnegie Mellon University, she had followed what most would consider the ideal professional journey: a prestigious education, a career in finance, and long-term stability ahead. But somewhere between her trading job and New York’s bustling food scene, a different kind of curiosity had begun to take shape.

“I was always a foodie at heart. Growing up, I think I came from a very food loving family where we used to cook meals together, and all the travels revolved around us exploring the local cuisines wherever we went,” Tanvi says.

Living in New York exposed her to some of the world’s best restaurants and chefs. Tanvi started to learn culinary techniques from them, understand global food trends, and observe how successful food businesses operated. Her weekends were spent exploring restaurants, dessert cafes, etc., across the city, which eventually led to her start her own food blog. 

When she moved back to India, Tanvi noticed a wide gap in the country’s ice cream market. Legacy brands continued selling traditional ice cream flavours that consumers had known for generations, while premium offerings were limited to imported packaged products or regional gourmet ice cream parlours. 

While legacy players like Amul and Kwality Wall’s dominated the mass market, newer premium brands such as Baskin-Robbins and NIC Ice Creams were beginning to shape India’s premium and experimental dessert space.

“I saw a gap where there were these mass market brands making those eight to 10 flavours, and then there were these premium ice cream brands that were perceived as expensive and imported at that point in time. So that’s what I wanted to come in and sort of be the Ben and Jerry's of India where we create something different, where we create sundaes, desserts in a tub and at affordable prices,” says Tanvi.

That vision became Papacream, a dessert-first ice cream company founded in 2015. The Mumbai-based brand was built around the idea that premium desserts should feel indulgent, but not intimidating. 

The company balances its pricing to keep it as affordable as possible while also maintaining the quality. Single-serve ice creams are priced between Rs 120 and Rs 175, Popsicles cost Rs 95 for a two-pack, and larger tubs range from Rs 395 to Rs 695.

For Tanvi, accessibility was just as important as quality, and that philosophy shaped everything—from the product strategy to the brand name itself.

Flavours with a twist

Instead of focusing on niche combinations, Papacream builds on flavours and combinations that consumers already love. Products like the Dark Fantasy Belgian Chocolate ice cream, Jamun Masala popsies, Hazelnut cold coffee ice cream, or a Birthday Cake Sundae are all reinterpretations of familiar nostalgic experiences.

“I would never do something like a wasabi ice cream,” Tanvi says. “It may look cool on a menu, but it can intimidate people,” she says. 

Tanvi explains that 90% of the products are manufactured in-house, allowing the company  to innovate and execute it a lot faster. Each product undergoes multiple rounds of testing for taste, texture, stability, and shelf life.

At the centre of this process is blind testing, where 30-40 people from varied backgrounds sample products without labels or branding, comparing Papacream’s flavours against rival brands. This process helps the company gather unbiased feedback before launch. In some cases, the process takes up to three to six months to perfect. 

Product innovation

The brand has already joined the healthy offering trend due to customer demand. Today, Papacream offers vegan, keto, and diabetic-friendly options, with its vegan sugar free vanilla mud pie sundae being one of its bestselling products. 

Some of its flavours were inspired by the founders’ own experiences and nostalgia-driven preferences. Brown Butter Biscuit and Malted Milk, for instance, were not obvious commercial bets but became successful products.

“Those flavours took off because people could connect with those flavours and they never had it like an ice cream. So, sometimes it is a product that you've created that just takes off and becomes a trend,” Tanvi says.

Beyond product innovation, Papacream places strong emphasis on design. Tanvi, who describes herself as creatively inclined, wanted the packaging to feel as experiential as the dessert themselves. The company uses humour in the form of witty phrases on the packaging and a lot of colour to stand out in the market from other brands in the space, like Go Zero and NOTO.

In recent years, Papacream has shifted from a retail-heavy model to an online-first approach. A key turning point was its partnership with Cure Foods, which enabled the brand to expand rapidly through dark stores. Today, the company has scaled to 100 dark stores in just five months, and is on track to reach 200 locations by year end.

Growth and expansion

Despite the growth, the company has maintained consistency in its portfolio. Nearly 40% of its menu has remained unchanged since the early days due to strong customer demand, while the rest caters to people who love trying experimental flavours or just want something different. 

The brand has also started expanding internationally and already exports to Singapore and the UAE. According to Tanvi, these markets have shown strong demand not only for vegan products, but also for its traditional Indian products like kulfi and sugar-free kulfi.

Papacream’s packaging has further strengthened its international appeal. Its popsies, designed with push-pop style packaging, are particularly suited for convenience-led consumption markets like Singapore, where vending machine culture promotes on-the-go consumption style.

What next?

Looking ahead, Papacream is targeting Rs 25 crore ARR in the near term and Rs 50 crore ARR over the next three years. By 2030, it plans to expand to 500 dark stores across the country that would span across Tier I and Tier II cities.

The company is also gearing up to enter quick commerce, building on its current presence on quick commerce app FirstClub.