Even in the era of AI disruption, people still love a good dosa.
Mumbai-based dosa chain Benne has raised Rs 35 crore in a pre-Series A round led by Ranjan Pai’s family office, Claypond Capital, which put in Rs 28.75 crore of the total. AL Trusts contributed Rs 3.5 crore, Mukul Agrawal invested Rs 1.75 crore, and smaller cheques of Rs 75 lakh and Rs 25 lakh came in from Madhukeshwar Desai and Cortado Advisory Services respectively. That values Benne at roughly Rs 364 crore on a post-money basis, a striking number for a chain that operates out of a handful of outlets and is not yet two years old.
From a craving to a cap table
Benne was started by husband-wife duo Akhil Iyer and Shriya Narayan, who opened their first outlet in Bandra in May 2024. Neither had worked in restaurants before this. Iyer had a career as an actor, with credits including Lekar Hum Deewana Dil and the Amazon Prime series The Forgotten Army, while Narayan trained as a psychologist. Both grew up in Bengaluru, and after moving to Mumbai, they found themselves missing the Davangere-style benne dosa they had grown up eating at the city’s darshinis.
Rather than settle for what Mumbai’s South Indian eateries had to offer, the couple decided to build it themselves. Iyer trained under a dosa maker on Bengaluru’s Avenue Road to get the technique down, and the two spent months testing batter and chutney recipes in their home kitchen before they were satisfied. They even sourced cast iron tawas from Karnataka to keep the preparation authentic. The menu they eventually settled on was narrow by design: a small set of dosas, a single chutney, and copious amounts of ghee and white butter, served standing-style out of a 275 square foot space.
The bet on staying narrow paid off quickly. The tiny Bandra outlet started pulling queues, helped along by Iyer and Narayan documenting the process on social media, including the setbacks, long before the cafe opened. That online following turned into offline footfall, and Benne soon found itself hosting a stream of Bollywood regulars, among them Deepika Padukone, Ranveer Singh, Virat Kohli, Shraddha Kapoor and Masaba Gupta. The brand has since opened additional outlets, including one planned in South Mumbai, and has scaled a limited-menu, compact-format model across dine-in, takeaway and delivery.
Crowded darshini shelf
Benne’s rise mirrors a broader appetite investors have developed for South Indian quick-service formats built around nostalgia and a tight menu. Bengaluru’s Rameshwaram Cafe, which turned a single outlet into a chain fielding thousands of franchise enquiries a year, expanded into Mumbai earlier this year and now competes directly with Benne on its own turf. Cafe Amudham and other premium South Indian QSR players round out a segment that has gone from neighbourhood curiosity to a category serious money wants a piece of.
For Iyer and Narayan, the fresh capital is earmarked for expanding operations, a signal that a cafe built around a single childhood craving is now being run like a business built to scale.